This man, Cipriani de Lloseta, leads a somewhat lonely life,
inasmuch as he associates but little with the men of his rank and
station. It is, for instance, known that he walks on the Rambla,
but no one of any importance whatever, no one that is likely to
recognise him, is aware of the fact that another favourite promenade
of his is the Muelle de Ponente, that forsaken pier where the stone
works are and where no one ever promenades. Here Cipriani de
Lloseta walks gravely in the evening--to be more precise, on Tuesday
or Friday evening--about five o'clock, when the boat sails for
Majorca.

He stands, a lonely, cloaked figure, at the end of the long stone
pier, and his dark Spanish eyes rest on the steamer as it glides
away into the darkening east and south.

Often, often this man watches the boats depart, but he never goes
himself. Often, often he gazes out in his chastened, impenetrable
silence over the horizon, as if seeking to pierce the distance and
look on the bare heights of the far-off island.

For there, over the glassy smoothness of the horizon, behind those
little grey clouds, is Majorca--and Lloseta.

Lloseta, a bare, brown village, standing on the hillside, as if it
had economically crept up there among the pines, so as to leave
available for cultivation every inch of the wonderful soil of the
plain. Below, the vast fertile plateau, tilled like a garden, lies
to the westward, while to the east the rising undulations terminate
in the bare uplands of Inca. Olive-trees cover the plain like an
army, trees that were planted by the Moors a thousand years ago.