It was the last evening of Carnival.The same masks, the same yells, the same mad rushes, the same bedlam of disguised humanity blowing about the streets in the great gusts of mistral that seemed to make them dance like dead leaves on an earth where all joy is watched by death.
It was exactly twelve months since that other carnival evening when I had felt a little weary and a little lonely but at peace with all mankind.It must have been - to a day or two.But on this evening it wasn't merely loneliness that I felt.I felt bereaved with a sense of a complete and universal loss in which there was perhaps more resentment than mourning; as if the world had not been taken away from me by an august decree but filched from my innocence by an underhand fate at the very moment when it had disclosed to my passion its warm and generous beauty.This consciousness of universal loss had this advantage that it induced something resembling a state of philosophic indifference.I walked up to the railway station caring as little for the cold blasts of wind as though I had been going to the scaffold.The delay of the train did not irritate me in the least.I had finally made up my mind to write a letter to Dona Rita; and this "honest fellow" for whom Iwas waiting would take it to her.He would have no difficulty in Tolosa in finding Madame de Lastaola.The General Headquarters, which was also a Court, would be buzzing with comments on her presence.Most likely that "honest fellow" was already known to Dona Rita.For all I knew he might have been her discovery just as I was.Probably I, too, was regarded as an "honest fellow" enough;but stupid - since it was clear that my luck was not inexhaustible.
I hoped that while carrying my letter the man would not let himself be caught by some Alphonsist guerilla who would, of course, shoot him.But why should he? I, for instance, had escaped with my life from a much more dangerous enterprise than merely passing through the frontier line in charge of some trustworthy guide.I pictured the fellow to myself trudging over the stony slopes and scrambling down wild ravines with my letter to Dona Rita in his pocket.It would be such a letter of farewell as no lover had ever written, no woman in the world had ever read, since the beginning of love on earth.It would be worthy of the woman.No experience, no memories, no dead traditions of passion or language would inspire it.She herself would be its sole inspiration.She would see her own image in it as in a mirror; and perhaps then she would understand what it was I was saying farewell to on the very threshold of my life.A breath of vanity passed through my brain.
A letter as moving as her mere existence was moving would be something unique.I regretted I was not a poet.
I woke up to a great noise of feet, a sudden influx of people through the doors of the platform.I made out my man's whiskers at once - not that they were enormous, but because I had been warned beforehand of their existence by the excellent Commissary General.
At first I saw nothing of him but his whiskers: they were black and cut somewhat in the shape of a shark's fin and so very fine that the least breath of air animated them into a sort of playful restlessness.The man's shoulders were hunched up and when he had made his way clear of the throng of passengers I perceived him as an unhappy and shivery being.Obviously he didn't expect to be met, because when I murmured an enquiring, "Senor Ortega?" into his ear he swerved away from me and nearly dropped a little handbag he was carrying.His complexion was uniformly pale, his mouth was red, but not engaging.His social status was not very definite.
