was engaged, and he had no alternative but to defend his rights to the
death.

Dona Perfecta had promised in her magnanimity to help him to
free himself from these disgraceful plots by means of an amicable
arrangement; but the days passed, and the good offices of the exemplary
lady had produced no result whatever. The claims multiplied with the
dangerous swiftness of a violent disease. Pepe Rey passed hour after
hour at court, making declarations and answering the same questions
over and over again, and when he returned home tired and angry, there
appeared before him the sharp features and grotesque face of the notary,
who had brought him a thick bundle of stamped papers full of horrible
formulas--that he might be studying the question.

It will be easily understood that Pepe Rey was not a man to endure
such annoyances when he might escape from them by leaving the town. His
mother's noble city appeared to his imagination like a horrible monster
which had fastened its ferocious claws in him and was drinking his
blood. To free himself from this monster nothing more was necessary, he
believed, than flight. But a weighty interest--an interest in which his
heart was concerned--kept him where he was; binding him to the rock of
his martyrdom with very strong bonds. Nevertheless, he had come to feel
so dissatisfied with his position; he had come to regard himself as
so utterly a stranger, so to say, in that gloomy city of lawsuits,
of old-fashioned customs and ideas, of envy and of slander, that he
resolved to leave it without further delay, without, however, abandoning
the project which had brought him to it. One morning, finding a
favorable occasion, he opened his mind to Dona Perfecta on this point.

"Nephew," responded that lady, with her accustomed gentleness, "don't be