CHAPTER III.
PATER OCEANUS When Don Esteban died very suddenly, his eighteen-year-old son was still studying in the university.
In his latter days the notary had begun to suspect that Ulysses was not going to be the celebrated jurist that he had dreamed.

He had a way of cutting classes in order to pass the morning in the harbor, exercising with the oars.

If he entered the university, the beadles were on their guard fearing his long-reaching hands: for he already fancied himself a sailor and liked to imitate the men of the sea who, accustomed to contend with the elements, considered a quarrel with a man as a very slight affair.

Alternating violently between study and laziness, he was laboriously approaching the end of his course when neuralgia of the heart carried off the notary.
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.