In Barcelona he became acquainted with his uncle, the rich and talented financier of the Blanes family,--one of his mother's brothers, proprietor of a great hardware shop situated in one of the damp, narrow and crowded streets that ran into the Rambla.

He soon came to know other maternal uncles in a village near the Cape of Creus.

This promontory with its wild coasts reminded him of that other one where the _Triton_ lived.

The first Hellenic sailors had also founded a city here, and the sea had also cast up amphoras, little statues and petrified bits of iron.
The Blanes family had gone much to sea.

They loved it as intensely as did the doctor, but with a cold and silent love, appreciating it less for its beauty than for the profits which it offered to the fortunate.
Their trips had been to America, in their own sailing vessels, importing sugar from Havana and corn from Buenos Ayres.