contract of partnership entered into by his mother and which, as it appeared, had not been fulfilled; and he was required in the same way to acknowledge a mortgage on the estate of The Poplars executed in an irregular form by his uncle.  Claims swarmed around him, multiplying with ant-like rapidity.  He had come to the determination to renounce the ownership of his lands, but meanwhile his dignity required that he should not yield to the wily manoeuvres of the artful rustics; and as the town-council brought a claim against him also on account of a pretended confusion of the boundary lines of his estate with those of an adjoining wood belonging to the town-lands, the unfortunate young man found himself at every step obliged to prove his rights, which were being continually called in question.  His honor was engaged, and he had no alternative but to defend his rights to the death.

Dona Perfecta had promised in her magnanimity to help him to free himself from these disgraceful plots by means of an amicable arrangement; but the days passed, and the good offices of the exemplary lady had produced no result whatever.  The claims multiplied with the dangerous swiftness of a violent disease.  Pepe Rey passed hour after hour at court, making declarations and answering the same questions over and over again, and when he returned home tired and angry, there appeared before him the sharp features and grotesque face of the notary, who had brought him a thick bundle of stamped papers full of horrible formulas—­that he might be studying the question.

It will be easily understood that Pepe Rey was not a man to endure such annoyances when he might escape from them by leaving the town.  His mother’s noble city appeared to his imagination like a horrible monster which had fastened its ferocious claws in him and was drinking his blood.  To free himself from this monster nothing more was necessary, he believed, than flight.  But a weighty interest—­an interest in which his heart was concerned—­kept him where he was; binding him to the rock of his martyrdom with very strong bonds.  Nevertheless, he had come to feel so dissatisfied with his position; he had come to regard himself as so utterly a stranger, so to say, in that gloomy city of lawsuits, of old-fashioned customs and ideas, of envy and of slander, that he resolved to leave it without further delay, without, however, abandoning the project which had brought him to it.  One morning, finding a favorable occasion, he opened his mind to Dona Perfecta on this point.

“Nephew,” responded that lady, with her accustomed gentleness, “don’t be rash.  Why! you are like fire.  Your father was just the same—­what a man he was!  You are like a flash—­I have already told you that I will be very glad to call you my son.  Even if you did not possess the good qualities and the talents which distinguish you (in spite of some little defects, for you have those, too); even if you were not as good