Upon coming out from the stupefaction of her grief,
Dona Cristina looked around her with aversion.
Why should she linger on in Valencia? Since she
could no longer be with the man who had brought her
to this country, she wanted to return to her own people.
The poet Labarta would look after her properties that
were not so valuable nor numerous as the income of
the notary had led them to suppose. Don Esteban
had suffered great losses in extravagant business
speculations good-naturedly accepted, but there was
still left a fortune sufficient to enable his wife
to live as an independent widow among her relatives
in Barcelona.
In arranging her new existence, the poor lady encountered
no opposition except the rebelliousness of Ulysses.
He refused to continue his college course and he wished
to go to sea, saying that for that reason he had studied
to become a pilot. In vain Dona Cristina entreated
the aid of relatives and friends, excluding the Triton,
whose response she could easily guess. The rich
brother from Barcelona was brief and affirmative,
“But wouldn’t that bring him in the money?"...
The Blanes of the coast showed a gloomy fatalism.
It would be useless to oppose the lad if he felt that
to be his vocation. The sea had a tight clutch
upon those who followed it, and there was no power
on earth that could dissuade him. On that account
they who were already old were not listening to their
sons who were trying to tempt them with the convenience
of life in the capital. They needed to live near
the coast in agreeable contact with the dark and ponderous
monster which had rocked them so maternally when it
might just as easily have dashed them to pieces.
The only one who protested was Labarta. A sailor?...
that might be a very good thing, but a warlike sailor,
an official of the Royal Armada. And in his mind’s
eye the poet could see his godson clad in all the
splendors of naval elegance,—a blue jacket
with gold buttons for every day, and for holiday attire
a coat trimmed with galloon and red trappings, a pointed
hat, a sword....
Ulysses shrugged his shoulders before such grandeur.
He was too old now to enter the naval school.
Besides he wanted to sail over all oceans, and the
officers of the navy only had occasion to cruise from
one port to another like the people of the coast trade,
or even passed years seated in the cabinet of the
naval executive. If he had to grow old in an
office, he would rather take up his father’s
profession of notary.
After seeing Dona Cristina well established in Barcelona,
surrounded with a cortege of nephews fawning upon
the rich aunt from Valencia, her son embarked as apprentice
on a transatlantic boat which was making regular trips
to Cuba and the United States. Thus began the
seafaring life of Ulysses Ferragut, which terminated
only with his death.
The pride of the family placed him on a luxurious
steamer, a mail-packet full of passengers, a floating
hotel on which the officials were something like the
managers of the Palace Hotel, while the real responsibility
devolved upon the engineers, who were always going
below, and upon returning to the light, invariably
remained modestly in a second place, according to
a hieratical law anterior to the progress of mechanics.
