These tempting
offers, which would have fired my brain in other circumstances--the
single state, I mean--I felt compelled to decline, though I did not
state my real reasons for doing so. He shrugged his shoulders in the
eloquent Oriental fashion, remarking that it would not surprise him
if I altered my resolution in a few days.
"Never!" I mentally ejaculated.
Then he recalled our first meeting again, spoke of Margarita, that
marvellously beautiful child, asking if I had not thought it strange
so fair a flower as that should have sprung from the homely stalk of
a sweet potato? I answered that I had been surprised at first, but had
ceased to believe that she was a child of Batata's, or of any of his
kin. He then offered to tell me Margarita's history; and I was not
surprised to hear that he knew it.
"I owe you this," he said, "in expiation of the somewhat offensive
remarks I addressed to you that day in reference to the girl. But you
must remember that I was then only Marcos Marco, a peasant, and, having
some slight knowledge of acting, it was only natural that my speech
should be, as you find it in our common people, somewhat dry and
ironical.
"Many years ago there lived in this country one Basilio de la Barca,
a person of so noble a figure and countenance that to all those who
beheld him he became the type of perfect beauty, so that a 'Basilio
de la Barca' came to be a proverbial expression in Montevidean society
when anyone surpassingly handsome was spoken of.
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