“But it was very far from a joke!  You ended by threatening her!”

“What calumnies!  Threaten her?  What for?  A woman of her stamp doesn’t need to be threatened!  I would never have stooped so low!  I am no schoolboy!”

“Passion leads men into all sorts of folly.”

“That woman is capable of anything!  She would slander our Lord himself to His face!  Passion?  I?  At my age?  I am well on in the forties, your honor, and many a gray hair besides.  Many a folly I committed in my youth, like everyone else.  But now—­Besides, with a woman like that!  I was no blind man, even if Don Nicasio was.  I knew that that young fellow—­poor fool, he paid dearly for her—­I knew that he had turned her head.  That’s the way with some women—­they go their own gait, they’re off with one and on with another, and then they end by becoming the slave of some scalawag who robs and abuses them!  He used to beat her, your honor, many and many a time, your honor!  And I, for the sake of the poor husband, whom I pitied—­Yes, that is why she says that I threatened her.  She says so, because I was foolish enough to go and give her a talking to, the day that Don Nicasio said to me, ’I shall do something crazy!’ She knew what I meant, at least she pretended that she did.”

“No; this was what you said—­”

“Yes, your honor, I remember now exactly what I said.  ’I’ll spoil your sport,’ I told her, ‘if it sends me to the galleys!’ but I was speaking in the name of the husband.  In the heat of the moment one falls into a part—­”

“The husband knew nothing of all this.”

“Was I to boast to him of what I had done?  A friend either gives his services or else he doesn’t.  That is how I understand it.”

“Why were you so much concerned about it? “.

“I ought not to have been, your honor.  I have too soft a heart.”

“Your threats became troublesome.  And not threats alone, but promise after promise!  And gifts besides, a ring and a pair of earrings—­”

“That is true.  I won’t deny it.  I found them in my pocket, quite by chance.  They belonged to my wife.  It was an extravagance, but I did it, to keep poor Don Nicasio from doing something crazy.  If I could only win my point, I told myself, if I could only get that young fellow out of the way, then it would be time enough to say to Don Nicasio, ’My friend, give me back my ring and my earrings!’ He would not have needed to be told twice.  He is an honorable man, Don Nicasio!”

“But when she answered you, ‘Keep them yourself, I don’t want them!’ you began to beg her, almost in tears—­”

“Ah, your honor! since you must be told—­I don’t know how I managed to control myself—­I had so completely put myself in the place of the husband!  I could have strangled her with my own hands!  I could have done that very same crazy thing that Don Nicasio thought of doing!”

“Yet you were very prudent, that is evident.  You said to yourself:  ’If not for me, then not for him!’ The lover, I mean, not Don Nicasio.  And you began to work upon the husband, who, up to that time, had let things slide, either because he did not believe, or else because he preferred to bear the lesser evil—­”