He caressed Gabriel as though he was the woman he loved, listening to his coughing, and recommending all sorts of fantastic remedies imagined by himself, uneasy at the progress of his malady and trembling at the idea that death might tear from him his only listener.
He told Gabriel of all the music he had studied during his absence.
When the sick man coughed much, he would cease playing his harmonium, and begin long talks with his friend, always on the subject of his constant preoccupation, musical art.
"Gabriel," said the musician one evening; "you who are so keen an observer, and who knows so much, has it ever struck you that Spain is sad, and has not the sweet sentimentality of true poetry?
She is not melancholy, she is sad, with a wild and savage silence.

She either laughs in wild peals, or weeps moaning.

She has not the gentle smile, the joyful brightness that distinguishes the man from the animal.

If she laughs it is showing all her teeth; her inner meaning is always gloomy, with the obscurity of a cavern in which all passions rage like wild beasts seeking for an outlet." "You say truly, Spain is sad," replied Luna.

"She does not now go dressed in black, with the rosary hanging to the pommel of her sword as in former years.