Before proceeding further, it will be well to tell who Pepe Rey was, and
what were the affairs which had brought him to Orbajosa.

When Brigadier Rey died in 1841, his two children, Juan and Perfecta,
had just married: the latter the richest land-owner of Orbajosa, the
former a young girl of the same city. The husband of Perfecta was
called Don Manuel Maria Jose de Polentinos, and the wife of Juan, Maria
Polentinos; but although they had the same surname, their relationship
was somewhat distant and not very easy to make out. Juan Rey was a
distinguished jurisconsult who had been graduated in Seville and had
practised law in that city for thirty years with no less honor than
profit. In 1845 he was left a widower with a son who was old enough
to play mischievous pranks; he would sometimes amuse himself by
constructing viaducts, mounds, ponds, dikes, and trenches of earth, in
the yard of the house, and then flooding those fragile works with water.
His father let him do so, saying, "You will be an engineer."

Perfecta and Juan had ceased to see each other from the time of their
marriage, because the sister had gone to Madrid with her husband, the
wealthy Polentinos, who was as rich as he was extravagant. Play and
women had so completely enslaved Manuel Maria Jose that he would have
dissipated all his fortune, if death had not been beforehand with him
and carried him off before he had had time to squander it. In a night of
orgy the life of the rich provincial, who had been sucked so voraciously
by the leeches of the capital and the insatiable vampire of play, came
to a sudden termination. His sole heir was a daughter a few months old.
With the death of Perfecta's husband the terrors of the family were
at an end, but the great struggle began. The house of Polentinos was
ruined; the estates were in danger of being seized by the money-lenders;
all was in confusion: enormous debts, lamentable management in Orbajosa,