In my agitated dream I had changed position and had allowed myself to fall on the venerable English lady who was travelling next to me. "Aah! You—sleeping—disturb me," she said, making a sour face, while she pushed away from her my bundle of books which had fallen onto her knees.
"Madam, it's true. I fell asleep," I replied, embarrassed to see that all the passengers were laughing at this scene.
"Oh! I tell driver—you disturb me—very shocking," the English woman added in her incomprehensible gibberish: "Oh! You think my body is your bed for you to sleep. Oh! Gentleman, you are a stupid ass."
On saying this, this daughter of Britannia, who already had a ruddy complexion, blushed red as a tomato. You might have thought that the blood that had rushed to her cheeks and her nose was flowing from her incandescent pores. She showed me four sharp and very white teeth as if she wanted to bite me. I asked of her a thousand pardons for the discourtesy of falling asleep, picked up my bundle and reviewed the new faces that there now were in the tram.
Imagine, oh calm and kind reader, when I saw facing me—guess who? the young man I had just finished dreaming about, Don Rafael in the flesh. I rubbed my eyes to convince myself that I was not still asleep and found myself awake, as awake as I am now. He it was and he was talking to someone else who was travelling with him. I paid attention and listened as hard as I could:
"But didn't you suspect anything?" the other person said to him.
"Something, yes. But I held my tongue. She looked petrified with terror. Her husband ordered her to play the piano and she did not dare to resist. She played, as always, admirably, and, as I listened to her, I managed to forget the dangerous situation in which we found ourselves. Despite the efforts she was making to look calm, a moment came when she was no longer able to pretend any more. Her arms relaxed and slipped off the keys. She threw her head back and cried out. Then her husband took out a dagger and, taking a step towards her, shouted furiously: "Play or I'll kill you this instant." When I saw this my blood boiled. I wanted to throw myself at that wretch, but I felt in my body a sensation that I cannot describe to you. A furnace had lit up in my stomach. Fire was running through my veins. My lungs were hyperventilating and I fell on the floor senseless."
"And before that did you not recognize the symptoms of poisoning?" asked the other. "I noticed a certain feeling of uneasiness and had a vague suspicion, but nothing more than that. The poison had been well prepared. It had a delayed effect on me and did not kill me, though it's left me with a physical impairment for life."
"And after you passed out, what happened?"
Rafael was going to answer and I was hanging on his every word as if it were a matter of life and death when the tram halted.
"Ah, here we are already at Consejos. Let's get off here," said
Rafael.
What a nuisance! They were getting off and I would not know how the story ended.
"Sir, sir, a word," I said on seeing them get off. The young man stopped and looked at me.
"And the Countess? What became of her?" I asked eagerly.
Loud laughter was my only response. The two young men laughed too and left without saying a word. The only living being to keep her sphinx-like calm at such a comic scene was the English woman who, indignant at my outlandish behaviour, turned to the other passengers saying: "Oh! A lunatic fellow!"