The Enemies of Women (Los enemigos de la mujer)

"And just think that after all he is an idiot!" he exclaimed, with the frankness of a man who is carried away by his feelings. "All his faculties are warped, and narrowed, concentrated on a single purpose, music, without leaving anything for anything else. However, what's the difference? He's an idiot – but a sublime idiot."

There were nights when Spadoni remained with his elbow on the keyboard and his brow resting in his right hand, as though completely absorbed in music. As a matter of fact, the visions that were then whirling in his head, beneath those long locks, were red and black squares, many cards, and thirty-six numbers in three rows beginning with a zero. The Prince, annoyed by the silence, turned to Castro.

"Tell us something about your grandfather, Don Enrique."

This grandfather had married an aunt of General Saldaña, and although Atilio had never known him personally he often talked about him, as a curious sort of person who aroused either his admiration or his bitter irony, according to the mood he happened to be in. This ancestor was a man of warlike temperament and rather perverse enthusiasms, who had succeeded in depleting the family fortune, already undermined by his predecessors. Related to a great many nobles, he usually would deny the relationship if forced to the point, as though it were something of which to be ashamed. Other members of the family might take the title of nobility if they chose. The motto which had figured for centuries on the Castro shield was an accurate summary of the man's character: "To-morrow more revolutionary than to-day." For thirty years there had not been a successful or abortive insurrection in Spain in which this somber-looking gentleman had not had a hand. He was very sensitive to insult and a great swordsman. He treated men like a despot and at the same time he was ready to die for the liberty of mankind.

"A red Don Quixote!" said Castro.

He remembered having played with the old man's sword, as a child. It was a Toledo weapon, inlaid with golden arabesques copied from the old sword of the explorer and conquistador, Alvaro de Castro, who had been Governor of the Indies. But toward the hilt of the blade, where his ancestors had been wont to inscribe an expression of fidelity to their God and King, Don Enrique had had engraved: "Long live the Republic!" Without this knightly sword, he refused to take part in a revolution. He had carried it from Sicily to Naples, following Garibaldi to dethrone the Bourbons. "To-morrow more revolutionary than to-day!" His companions soon appeared to him unspeakable reactionaries, and this caused him to seek new doctrines which would fully satisfy his insatiable eagerness for destruction and innovation. Finally, this descendant of Governors and Viceroys wound up in the "First International." And the most extraordinary thing of all was that in his new life he never lost the traces of his early education, his arrogance and his knightly ways, which caused him to consider the slightest difference of opinion as "an affair of honor."

Over a discussion in a committee meeting, he had fought a "comrade" laborer in Paris. No sooner had they crossed swords than the workman received a cut across the head.

"It is quite just," said the wounded man, wiping away the blood. "The Marquis, who has been able to learn the use of weapons, ought of course to beat a mere man of the people."

Don Enrique turned pale at the irony, and to restore equality, and eliminate his traditional advantages, he raised his sword and gave himself a terrible cut across the skull, while the witnesses ran forward to seize him and prevent him from doing it again.

After accompanying Garibaldi once more, in the War of 1870, fighting the Prussians at Dijon, he was drawn to Paris by the revolutionary movement of the Commune.

"I think they made him a general," Atilio said. "He must have suffered heavily in that tragic farce. It is certain that he was executed by the government troops, and no one knows where he is buried."

Atilio's admiration for his grandfather, whose life had been so romantic, was dampened by the thought of his mother. Poor, an orphan, and forgotten by her relatives, she had been obliged to marry a man old enough to be her father, and led the wandering life, outside of Spain, that is forced upon the wives of consuls. Atilio was born in Leghorn, and was given the name of his godfather, an old Italian gentleman, who was a friend of the Spanish Consul. The memory of his grandfather, saddened from time to time the life of his poor, resigned, and devout mother. In Rome, visiting Spaniards, all persons of conventional ideas who came to see the Pope, would look askance on learning of her birth: "Oh, so you are the daughter of Enrique de Castro!" And she would seem to shrink, and beg their pardon with her sad, humble eyes.

"I don't disown my grandfather," Castro added. "I would like to have known him. The only thing I blame him for is that he left us so poor; though his forefathers had already done more than he to ruin us."

On days when Atilio had lost, he was more prone to complain, recalling the immense estates of the Castros, gained in the conquests in America.

"To-day there are large cities on the fields given by the king to my forefathers. One of my remote ancestors grazed horses, and built a colonial country house on land where at the present time you will find gardens, monuments, and big hotels. There were hundreds of millions of square yards; at a franc a yard, imagine, Michael! I would be richer than you, richer than all the millionaires in the world. And I'm only a well-dressed beggar. Good God! Why didn't my ancestors keep their land, instead of devoting themselves to serving the king and the people? Why didn't they do like any peasant who keeps religiously what has been left him by his ancestors?"

Other evenings, seated in the loggia, the Prince listened to Novoa and gazed at the nocturnal scene of sea and sky. There was no light, save the veiled gleam from the distant drawing-room. The coast was dark. The silhouette of Monte Carlo stood out against the starry background, without a single dot of red. There were few street lights in the city, and besides, the glass of those few was painted blue. The lamps on the stairway of the Casino were shrouded like those of a hearse. The German submarine menace kept the whole Principality, as well as the French coast, in darkness. Only at the entrance to the harbor of Monaco, the two octagonal towers kept on their summit a red and a green beacon, which threw out over the water one shifting path of rubies, and another of emeralds.

In the darkness, standing and looking at the stars, Novoa talked about the poetry of space, about distances that defy human calculations. It was impossible for Spadoni to follow this talk with the same attention as the Prince and Castro. What did the so-called tri-colored star matter to him? The millions and millions of leagues that the scientist spoke of merely made him yawn; and through an association of ideas, he became absorbed in gambling, mentally, imagining that he was winning fifty times in succession, doubling each time.

He wagered a simple five franc piece – the smallest bet allowed in the Casino – and at the end of the twenty-fifth bet he stopped as though horror-struck. He had won more than a hundred and sixty-seven million francs. In only twenty-five minutes! The Casino was closing its doors, declaring the bank broken! But this was not enough to bring him out of his dream. The marvellous five franc piece remained on the green cloth beside a mountain of money which kept growing and growing. He must finish the fifty bets, always doubling. He continued for five more times and then stopped. He had already won more than five thousand million francs. They would have to hand over the entire Principality of Monaco to him, and even that would not be enough perhaps to pay the debt. The thirty-fifth time the simple "napoleon" had become a hundred seventy-one billions of francs. They wouldn't pay him; he was sure of that. It would be necessary for all the great powers of Europe to ally themselves as though for a great war, and even then perhaps, he, the pianist, Teofilo Spadoni, would not accept the credit they might offer him.

He could no longer make the calculations mentally. The twentieth time he had been obliged to have resource to the pencil which he used in the Casino to note results of the various plays, and to the cards divided in columns which were distributed by the employees. The back of the card was rather narrow for his winnings, which kept growing so tremendously that they had reached fantastic sums. He continued his triumphant playing. At the fortieth winning he stopped. Five million million francs. Decidedly neither Europe nor the entire world would be able to pay him. The nations would have to put themselves up for sale, the globe would be put on public auction, the women would all have to sell their bodies and give him the proceeds; and even so it would be necessary to ask him for several thousands of years in which to pay the debt to him, the creditor of the universe, seated on his piano stool as though on a throne.

But although he was certain that he was being deceived, since no one on earth or heaven could guarantee the bank, he went on playing. There were only ten more bets to be made. And when he had made the fiftieth he had a sudden stroke of generosity. In his mind he gave the employees of the Casino thousands, millions, and millions of millions. For himself he only kept the amount that figured at the head of his winnings, and wrote on his card:

5,000,000,000,000,000 francs.

Five thousand billions! For fifty minutes' work, that wasn't bad.

Suddenly his attention was attracted by the silence in which the Prince and Castro were listening to Novoa, and he fixed his visionary gaze on the latter, his eyes still dazzled by the golden whirl of the Vision.

The scientist too was talking about millions of millions, figures which words would not express, and was going into detail, repeating dozens of ciphers one after the other. He thought he heard the professor surmising the age which the sun would reach in time – here an interminable figure – the disappearance of the present forms of life, the recession of the heavenly body towards an exceedingly remote constellation, and its final extinction and death – here another appalling sum.

Spadoni smiled disdainfully. The sun, the constellation of Hercules, the hundred million years that it would take for the former to reach the earth, the seventeen million years that it would require to lose its incandescence, and cease furnishing warmth for life on earth, and all the other calculations of the scientist were as nothing, mere nothing! If he were to put his money on the green table fifty times more, the figures obtained by astronomy would appear paltry and ridiculous beside the winnings obtained in an hour and forty minutes. God alone could be the banker, and pay with stars as though they were money; and who knows if God himself would be able to withstand the hundredth time the five franc piece was wagered, always doubling, and if he would not have to declare his bank was broken?

Spadoni remained for some time absorbed in inner contemplation of his greatness. Coming out of his revery he became aware of Novoa's voice which still sounded a note of mystery, before that dark horizon, dotted above with the points of light from the stars, and undulating below with the phosphorescence of the waves.

The Prince urged him to talk of the sea as the regulator and origin of life. The pianist heard it said that the sea covers three-fourths of the globe, and, as it represents a large preponderance over the continents, the latter, though they consider themselves superior, are dominated by the former, just as governments are obliged to yield to universal suffrage and respect the strength of majorities. All the great atmospheric laws are established, not on the lesser surface of the land, which is rough and broken, but on the vast ocean spaces, which allow the molecules freely to obey the mechanical laws of fluids.

Spadoni touched Castro on the elbow, and tried to tell him in a low voice about the unheard-of winnings that he had just made. But Atilio, without turning around, brushed the interrupting hand aside, and went on listening.

Novoa was talking about the hot waters which condensed on the globe in the primordial atmosphere, and had been precipitated on the crust of the earth which was then in formation, dissolving and tearing down everything in their way on the new-born surface.

"With the salt that there is in the ocean," Novoa said, "one could reconstruct the entire African continent."

The pianist stirred once more in his seat. An Africa made of salt! What could you do with it?

"Castro, listen to me," he said in a low voice. "I put five francs on a certain bet, fifty times in succession, doubling each time, do you know?"

But the latter was not interested, and rejected the piece of cardboard held out to him.

Spadoni, offended, shut his eyes, deciding to isolate himself from the rest, and not listen to what did not seem to him of any importance. If the scientist was going to talk every evening, he would dispense with the hospitality of the Prince, and go in search of other friends.

Suddenly, a word caught his ear and drew him from his shell, causing him to open his eyes. The Professor was talking about the gold that had been washed away by the boiling rains at the creation of the globe, and was still present in solution in the sea.

"There are only a few milligrams in each ton of water, but with all that there is in the ocean one could form a heap so immense, that, if it were divided equally among the thousand five hundred million inhabitants of the earth, we would each get an eighty-five thousand pound ingot, or some forty tons of gold."

The pianist craned his neck in amazement. What was the Professor saying?

"And," Novoa continued, "according to the value of gold before the war, each person's ingot would represent some hundred and twenty million francs."

The silence was broken by a whistling sound. Castro turned his head, thinking that Spadoni was snoring. Observing the pianist's staring eyes, he realized that this was a sigh, of real emotion, an exclamation of surprise.

"I'll give my share for a hundred thousand francs in bank-notes," he said in solemn tones.

And as the others laughed, he remained with his eyes fixed on Novoa. The sea! Who would have thought that the sea!.. That scientist knew a great deal; and as for himself, with sudden awe and respect, he determined that hereafter he would always listen to him.

One night, Atilio and the Prince were eating alone. On leaving the Casino, the pianist had gone off to Nice with some English friends of his, who played poker in their landau. Novoa had been invited to dine with a colleague from the Museum and would not be back until midnight.

Michael was thinking of his impressions of that afternoon. He had gone to the Casino to attend a classical concert, determined to face the obsequious curiosity of the employees, and take the risk of running across former friends. From the outer stairway to the door of the theater he had been obliged to reply to the series of deep bows from the various functionaries, some with military caps and gold buttons, others in solemn frock coats, stiff and dignified like lawyers in a play. The people who were passing through the portico noticed him immediately. "Prince Lubimoff!" They all remembered his yacht, his adventures, and his parties, and repeated his name like the glorious echo of a resurrected past. He had been obliged to hurry through the groups at top speed, with a vague stare, feigning absentmindedness, so as not to see certain well-known smiles, and certain inviting faces which evoked sweet visions of by-gone days.

In the auditorium he looked for a seat where he would be entirely inconspicuous, some corner divan, close to the wall; but even there he was annoyed by the curiosity of the crowd. Around the leader of the orchestra were the most famous musicians, those who prided themselves on the title of "Soloists to His Most Serene Highness the Prince of Monaco." Some of them had sailed with Prince Michael on his yacht, as members of the orchestra. During a pause in the music, the first violin, in looking around the room to see if he could recognize any of his admirers, discovered Lubimoff, and communicated his surprise at once to the other soloists. They all smiled in his direction, and showed on their faces that they were dedicating to him alone the music which was rising from their instruments. Finally the public began to notice the gentleman who was half hidden, and who was gradually attracting the attention of the entire orchestra.

When the concert was over Lubimoff left hurriedly, afraid of being stopped by certain former women friends whom he had observed in the audience. He crossed the portico brusquely, elbowing his way through the crowd that barred the way. Here his attention was caught by a person of majestic bearing and exclusive showy appearance, with a derby of smooth gray silk, a honey colored overcoat with velvet sleeves of the same shade, and white gloves and shoes. His gray side-whiskers joined his mustache; his hair was parted away down to his neck, and over his ears strayed two locks of hair, cut short and dyed and shining with cosmetics.

"I thought it was a Russian general or some Austrian of note dressed for winter, with an elegance worthy of the Riviera, and I find it's you, my dear Colonel. I hadn't seen you outside of Villa Sirena before."

Toledo blushed, not knowing whether to feel proud or annoyed, at these words.

"Your Excellency, I always liked to dress well, and…"

"Who was the lady you were talking with?"

"It was the Infanta. She was telling me that she had lost seven thousand francs that were sent to her from Italy, and that she hasn't the money to pay her living expenses, and…"