Rosario felt an inexplicable terror, witnessing this friendly conference.  She went away from the door and advanced, step by step, looking around her to see if she was observed.  Although she saw no one, she fancied that a million eyes were fastened upon her.  But suddenly her fears and her shame were dispelled.  At the window of the room occupied by Senor Pinzon appeared a man, dressed in blue; the buttons on his coat shone like rows of little lights.  She approached.  At the same instant she felt a pair of arms with galloons lift her up as if she were a feather and with a swift movement place her in the room.  All was changed.  Suddenly a crash was heard, a violent blow that shook the house to its foundations.  Neither knew the cause of the noise.  They trembled and were silent.

It was the moment in which the dragon had broken the table in the dining-room.

CHAPTER XXV

UNFORESEEN EVENTS—­A PASSING DISAGREEMENT

The scene changes.  We see before us a handsome room, bright, modest, gay, comfortable, and surprisingly clean.  A fine matting covers the floor, and the white walls are covered with good prints of saints and some sculptures of doubtful artistic value.  The old mahogany of the furniture shines with the polish of many Saturday rubbings, and the altar, on which a magnificent Virgin, dressed in blue and silver, receives domestic worship, is covered with innumerable pretty trifles, half sacred, half profane.  There are on it, besides, little pictures in beads, holy-water fonts, a watch-case with an Agnes Dei, a Palm Sunday palm-branch, and not a few odorless artificial flowers.  A number of oaken bookshelves contain a rich and choice library, in which Horace, the Epicurean and Sybarite, stands side by side with the tender Virgil, in whose verses we see the heart of the enamored Dido throbbing and melting; Ovid the large-nosed, as sublime as he is obscene and sycophantic, side by side with Martial, the eloquent and witty vagabond; Tibullus the impassioned, with Cicero the grand; the severe Titus Livius with the terrible Tacitus, the scourge of the Caesars; Lucretius the pantheist; Juvenal, who flayed with his pen; Plautus, who composed the best comedies of antiquity while turning a mill-wheel; Seneca the philosopher, of whom it is said that the noblest act of his life was his death; Quintilian the rhetorician; the immoral Sallust, who speaks so eloquently of virtue; the two Plinys; Suetonius and Varro—­in a word, all the Latin letters from the time when they stammered their first word with Livius Andronicus until they exhaled their last sigh with Rutilius.

But while making this unnecessary though rapid enumeration, we have not observed that two women have entered the room.  It is very early, but the Orbajosans are early risers.  The birds are singing to burst their throats in their cages; the church-bells are ringing for mass, and the goats, going from house to house to be milked, are tinkling their bells gayly.