Seated in a trunk without a lid, he made it balance itself, imitating with his mouth the roarings of the tempest.  It was a caravel, a galleon, a ship such as he had seen in the old books, its sails painted with lions and crucifixes, a castle on the poop and a figure-head carved on the prow that dipped down into the waves, only to reappear dripping with foam.

The trunk, by dint of vigorous pushing, could be made to reach the rugged coast at the corner of the old chest, the triangular gulf made of two chests of drawers, and the smooth beach formed by some bundles of clothes.  And the navigator, followed by a crew as numerous as it was imaginary, would leap ashore, sword in hand, scaling some mountains of books that were the Andes, and piercing various volumes with the tip of an old lance in order to plant his standard there.  Oh, why had he not been one of the conquerors?...

Fragments of a conversation between his godfather and his father, who believed everything was already known regarding the surface of the earth, left him unconvinced.  Something must still be left for him to discover!  He was the meeting point of two families of sailors.  His mother’s brothers had ships on the coast of Catalunia.  His father’s ancestors had been valorous and obscure navigators, and there in the Marina was his uncle, the doctor, a genuine man of the sea.

When he grew tired of these imaginative orgies, he used to examine the portraits of different epochs stowed away in the garret.  He preferred those of the women—­noble dames with short-cropped, curled hair bound by a knot of ribbon on the temple, like those that Velazquez loved to paint, and long faces of the century following, with cherry-colored mouth, two patches on the cheeks, and a tower of white hair.  The memory of the Grecian basilisa appeared to emanate from these paintings.  All the high-born dames seemed to have something in common with her.

Among the portraits of the men there was one of a bishop that irritated him by its absurd childishness.  He appeared almost his own age, an adolescent bishop, with imperious and aggressive eyes.  These eyes used to inspire the sensitive lad with a certain terror, and he therefore decided to have done with them.  “Take that!” and he ran his sword through the old chipped picture, making two gashes replace the challenging eyes.  Then he added a few gashes more for good measure....  That same evening, his godfather having been invited to supper, the notary spoke of a certain portrait acquired a few months before in the neighborhood of Jativa, a city that he had always regarded with interest on account of the Borgias having been born in one of its suburbs.  The two men were of the same opinion.  That almost infantile prelate could have been no other than Caesar Borgia, made Archbishop of Valencia when sixteen years old by his father, the Pope.  On their first free day they would examine the portrait with particular attention....  And Ulysses, hanging his head, felt every mouthful sticking in his throat.