Read Tristana for Free Online

could see the dusting of lights shining in the distance, and she felt entranced by the idea of independence. Emerging from her meditations as if from a lethargy, she gave a long sigh. How lonely she would be in the world away from the house of her poor, aged gallant! She had no relatives, and the only two people she could call “relatives” were far, far away: her maternal uncle, Don Fernando, was in the Philippines, and her cousin Cuesta was in Majorca, and neither of them had ever shown the slightest desire to help her. She recalled too (while Saturna watched with sympathetic eyes) that the families who had been friends of her mother’s and used to visit them regularly, now regarded her coolly and with suspicion, the effect of the diabolical shadow cast by Don Lope. In response, Tristana took refuge in her pride, and despising those who insulted her gave her the kind of ardent feeling of satisfaction which, like alcohol, briefly fills one with courage, but in the long run destroys.
    “Come on now, enough of these gloomy thoughts!” said Saturna, flapping her hand in front of her eyes, as if shooing away a fly.

6
    “WHAT do you expect me to think about? Happy things? Well, where are they?”
    To lighten the mood, Saturna would change the subject to something jollier, regaling Tristana with anecdotes and gossip from the garrulous society around them. On some nights, they would amuse themselves by making fun of Don Lope, who, finding himself in such straitened circumstances, had rejected the splendid habits of a lifetime and become rather stingy. Squeezed by his growing penury, he had cut back on the already minimal household expenses and was educating himself—at last!—in the art of domestic economics, so at odds with his chivalric philosophy. Grown meticulous and fussy, he now intervened in matters he had once deemed incompatible with his lordly decorum, and his new scowling, curmudgeonly demeanor disfigured him far more than the deep lines on his face and his graying hair. The two women drew much amusement and diversion from the misfortunes and the belatedly banal preoccupations of this fallen Don Juan. The comical thing was that since Don Lope knew absolutely nothing about the economics of the home, the more he prided himself on being a financier and a good administrator, the more easily Saturna found it to deceive him, being a past mistress in the art of pilfering and in the other skills required of cooks and those who go to market.
    With Tristana, he was always as generous as his ever-worsening financial circumstances would allow. The beginnings of their growing poverty were quite sad enough, but it was in the area of clothes that a painful reduction in expenditure made itself most keenly felt. Don Lope, however, sacrificed his own vanity to that of his slave, which was no small sacrifice for a man who was such a devoted admirer of himself. Then came the day when poverty revealed its bare skull in all its ugliness, and both Don Lope and Tristana found themselves wearing equally threadbare, antiquated outfits. Aided by Saturna, the poor girl would sit up late at night laboring over her few poor rags, finding a thousand ways to recast them, each one a marvel of skill and patience. In the brief period we might describe as happy or golden, Garrido occasionally used to take her to the theater, but necessity, with its heretic’s face, decreed, at last, the absolute suppression of all public spectacles. Her horizons closed in and grew ever darker, and that poor, disagreeable household, empty of all emotional warmth and devoid of any pleasing occupations, weighed heavy on her spirit. For the house, which still contained the remnants of certain luxurious furnishings, was becoming unimaginably ugly and sad; every object spoke of penury and decay; nothing that was broken or run down was mended or repaired. In the icy, plundered living room, among various hideous items of furniture, stood an ornate bargueño desk that had