After that dream, Dona Xima was my obsession. I thought I saw her everywhere, and, like Proteus, she appeared in any number of different forms. Even though I knew she was a grown woman, I found her in the Bois embodied in a fifteen-year-old girl playing diabolo. In the hotel dining room I recognized her in an Italian countess, and one evening when I was half asleep waiting for the Senyors to return from the theatre she appeared in the form of an angora cat who had her eyes and movements.
One morning, on the electric tram, I was surprised to see a graceful lady who I thought to be her on the Quai de la Mégisserie. The tram was racing along at top speed. I asked the conductor to let me off and he replied that there was not a stop there. The lady was left farther and farther behind. One more instant and I would have lost her. I was about to jump off the car when someone grabbed me by the arm.
‘You’re not allowed to do that, sir.’
My reaction was involuntary. It had never happened to me before: I flung my fist at the man, who turned out to be a police officer. The tram came to a halt even though it was not a stop and two other policemen asked me to come with them. I was embarrassed to death. I saw them take the wounded policeman away in a carriage. I had split his eyebrow. When I saw him covered in blood I was so distressed that I thought I might faint. Thank God I reached the police station on my own two feet, and was led up to an officer who upon seeing my habit bowed and greeted me, calling me ‘Monsieur l’abbé.’ After we sat down, he kindly inquired whether I was familiar with French law. Before I answered, he added with a smile: ‘I assume you had not been drinking.’
When he saw my surprise he laughed cordially and offered me a glass of wine, which I did not accept. Finally, turning in his chair and half closing his eyes, he said: ‘Mais racontez donc l’affaire, Monsieur l’abbé, je vous écoute.’
I began my story, sparing no details. When he heard I had wanted to get off the tram to meet a lady, he lifted one eyebrow.
‘She was my master’s niece,’ I added.
He opened one eye.
‘Mais je ne vous demande pas cela, Monsieur l’abbé.’
That statement disconcerted me.
‘It was of the utmost importance that I speak to her. With all this mess I’ve lost track of her, and now it will be impossible…’
‘You came to Paris in the company of your master, and you don’t know where to find this lady?’
‘That’s right. I came with my master and mistress.’
‘And couldn’t they give you her address?’
‘They don’t know it.’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed the Inspector, lifting the other eyebrow.
I realized he did not believe me. That was all I needed to fall into utter despair, and precisely because I never tell lies, my entire story seemed like nothing but a lie from that moment on.
‘I’m awfully sorry to have to arrest you for a few hours, sir,’ the inspector said, ‘but until the doctors determine how serious the officer’s wound is, you’d best not leave. I assume you know the penalty you would incur for assaulting a police officer.’
Instead of frightening me, his threat gave me courage.
‘No, Inspector, I don’t,’ was my reply. ‘That point is exclusively of your competence. I’m ashamed of what I’ve done. I find it so base to have used my strength against a man who only meant to fulfil his duty that I’ll never forgive myself. I know God will punish me for it, so the sentence I receive here may help to extenuate the one that awaits me in the afterlife.’
The inspector looked at me with curiosity.
‘It’s strange…’ he said, and the telephone suddenly rang. The Inspector spoke for a moment with the receiver stuck to his ear and then turned to me: ‘The doctors say his nose is broken.’
‘Is it bad?’
‘No…but it is serious. Monsieur l’abbé…’
I was heartbroken. In my distress all I could think of saying was: ‘Inspector, I’m not an abbot.’
‘Oh,’ he exclaimed. ‘Well, what are you, then?’
I understood he was about to take me for an impostor.
‘I’m only a chaplain from the House of Bearn.’
‘De la maison de Béarn?’ He looked at me inquisitively. I took out my wallet and gave him a hundred-franc note.
‘On behalf of my master, I beg you to have this delivered to the man I wounded.’
‘That’s awfully kind of you. Where are you staying?’
‘At the Hôtel du Louvre. And by the way, the Senyora had asked me not to be late for lunch.’
He seemed to hesitate.
‘I could let you go on probation,’ he said, ‘as long as you’re escorted by two officers. But that may shock the Princess,’ he added inquisitively.
Not knowing what princess he was referring to I kept my mouth shut.
‘Very well,’ said the inspector, ‘You may go now. I assume you’d rather their Highnesses didn’t find out about this. Next time, proceed with more caution. Believe me, it’s good advice.’
The inspector was convinced that the whole affair was nothing but a typical Parisian romantic adventure, and as a good Parisian, romance, even for a priest, appeared to be an extenuating circumstance. But what royalty was he referring to? He himself gave me the answer to the enigma.
‘I hope you will give my thanks to Monsieur le prince de Béarn for his donation.’
I hadn’t the courage to point out that he was not a prince. It was late and I wished to see the wounded officer who was in a nearby hospital. In fact it turned out to be farther away than I had imagined, and finally, after keeping me waiting for quite some time, they did not let me see him. I told them to give him on my behalf the pendant with the Virgin Mary which I always wore around my neck, and, alarmed to see how late it was, I asked them to let me speak with the hotel using the electric telephone. When I asked for the connection, the young ladies at the switchboard transferred me to the Museum. That confusion made me lose a few precious minutes, and when they finally put me through to the hotel and I had already recognized the concierge’s voice, it let out a spark that made me fall unconscious on the floor. When I came to, they called a cab that took me to the hotel, upset and with a bruise on my forehead. A servant opened the glass door and as he bowed to me I thought I heard him say that the Prince and Princess were waiting for me in the winter garden.
I heard him as if in a dream. I did not know there was a garden in the hotel. Luckily, through the French windows of the nearby drawing room, covered in a red carpet and lined like a jewel-case, where a grand total of five palms justified its being called a garden, I saw the Senyors saying their rosaries. The first words uttered by my benefactor, who was dying of hunger, were these: ‘You devil! I thought you’d been kidnapped by some beautiful lady. How on earth did you get that bruise?’
I cannot remember how I explained it all, and after the meal I locked myself up in my room. I needed to pray and collect my thoughts. I had to think of some explanation for the money I had given to the inspector. I had some savings at Bearn which may not have reached that amount but were not far from it; however, for the time being I had to say I had lost those hundred francs even if only to avoid our spending more than we could. It would have been nobler to confess the truth, yet it seemed wrong to stir up the past and raise the sensitive issue of their niece. Tired of going over it time and time again in my mind, I fell asleep, and immediately Dona Xima appeared: ‘The lady you saw,’ she said, ‘was not me.’
She seemed sadder than in the last dream and I asked her whether she prayed.
‘No, because it’s too late,’ she said, and disappeared.
I woke up and walked over to the balcony. In the foreground, leaning against the columns of the Théâtre Français, I noticed two gentlemen who did not take their eyes off the hotel. They could only have been policemen; it was improbable that they were robbers, at that time of the day and right in the centre of town. Suddenly, one of them signalled to the other. Don Toni had gone out, crossed the square and disappeared down the rue de Richelieu. The one who had signalled went over to his partner, who was younger than he, and said something to him. Then he went into the hotel. His partner lit a cigarette and pretended to read the theatre advertisements. When he had thus proved his indifference, as if he could guess that I was watching him and had performed that pantomime exclusively for my benefit, he walked away down the rue de Richelieu very fast, because Don Toni was already far ahead of him. A minute later the one who had gone into the hotel came back out and went over to the same place, also pretending to read the cast list of that evening’s performance of Phèdre. I found the events disturbing and decided not to move from my observation post. Less than a quarter of an hour later the Senyor returned with a package of books in his hand. At a reasonable distance, smoking and pretending to look at the ladies, the young policeman followed him.
When I went down to supper a few hours later, my benefactor was in the hall, scolding one of the bellboys in Mallorcan. The youth listened with his mouth open.
‘What is this nonsense about Monsieur le prince, you little cockroach? Get out of my sight!’
Over supper I had to give a more elaborate explanation of how I got my bruise. I had already prepared a few lies, because one muddle always leads to another. As I piled falsity upon falsity, I remembered the verse Father Pi made us recite in school:
On the path of sin
not taking the first step
is the very best thing
However, one thing leads to another in such a way that it was difficult to determine which was the first step. If a graceful lady (who I was now convinced was not Dona Xima) had not been on the Quai de la Mégisserie, I would not have tried to get off the tram nor attacked an officer. But why on earth did I have to speak to Dona Xima? To convert her? Would she have listened to a poor country chaplain? Could it not have happened that she would have tried to see the Senyors, again disrupting their placid existence? It is true that Don Toni was already old; he was already over seventy. But who knew…? It was certainly impossible to discover the initial cause of that tragedy. Was it Don Toni’s frivolity, morbid inheritances, circumstances, coincidences? All these ingredients and many others had helped unleash the events.
As we had our dessert, the boy came over and announced that Monsieur Garellano wanted to know if Monsieur de Béarn wished to come to the electric telephone. I had just told them my adventure with the spark that knocked me unconscious.
‘And now,’ said Dona Maria Antònia, ‘you have to talk on the telephone? Who is this Mister Garellano? If he has something to tell you, why doesn’t he just come here himself?’
At that moment I remembered that after lunch the Senyor had said to the boy, thinking I could not hear him: ‘Tonight you’ll come over to our table and say that this man is on the telephone,’ and handed him a slip of paper. Not until now did I realize the importance of that exchange. The Senyor went out and returned almost immediately.
‘That little urchin…’ he said, referring to the boy. ‘He insists upon calling me Prince! What he needs is a good whipping.’
He said it to distract our attention and make the telephone call seem less important. In my case he succeeded for the moment. It was obvious that the police were watching us and that the title of Prince of Bearn, mentioned for the first time that day at the hotel, where we had already spent almost three weeks, had something to do with the officers waiting in the square of the Théâtre Français. I did not like it one bit. Our life had become complicated. I did not know whether those policemen were protecting us as people of importance or spying on us as impostors. If it were the former, the latter would prove true before long.
‘What did the gentleman who sent for you want?’ Dona Maria Antònia asked.
‘He’s a fellow Spaniard. I don’t know him, but he heard we were going to Rome and wanted me to deliver something for him. I’ll go see him tomorrow. He lives in Auteuil, so don’t worry if I’m late for lunch.’
I was shocked by his lies. What was the Senyor up to? Dona Maria Antònia seemed vexed.
‘I’m getting old,’ she said, ‘and the world has changed very much; but Tonet, I don’t think that’s right. Making you go to the electric telephone is already rather bold. How does he know whether you want to talk on the telephone? And now he asks you to go all the way to Auteuil…’
‘He didn’t ask me to go; I offered to do so. A daughter of his is ill,’ he improvised.
‘But you aren’t a doctor, Tonet. The whole thing is quite suspicious,’ she added, pretending to take it in jest. ‘Don’t you think so, Joan? I think the Senyor is fooling us. Maybe he didn’t even get a telephone call and he’s made it all up so we’ll let him go off on his own. Very well. You and I will also amuse ourselves: we’ll go for a boat ride down the Seine.’
They went to bed before long. I stayed in the hall. I wanted to speak to the man in charge of the reception desk to see if I could stop the nonsense about the Prince and Princess. The receptionist was always madly busy: he took notes, added up bills, answered clients’ questions and spoke on the telephone. The man was too quick: he understood everything at the first word, and since he could not wait for the second, he never quite grasped things, even if in turn he answered ten questions in the time anyone else would have taken to answer one. Such qualities made him unpleasant despite his artificial smile. I had not even reached the comptoir when he looked up and flashed his teeth at me:
‘…sieu désire?’
He had used a word and a half, but I could not manage to answer with a single one, as I would have liked to. Eager to be specific, I fumbled for words, which irritated him: ‘Dites, dites…’ and while he pronounced these syllables he wrote numbers down on a piece of paper.
‘I’m sorry to bother you…’
He looked at me in anger and flashed his teeth at me again.
‘Dites, sieu…’ and he leaned over to bow to an elderly lady covered in jewels. I had to be quick.
‘My master would appreciate…’
‘Oui,’ he whistled loudly while ringing a bell and flashing all his teeth at two Americans who walked by. At that moment five very elegant travellers walked in and the receptionist lost interest in me.
‘My master,’ I shouted, ‘would appreciate your not addressing him by the title of Prince, because…’
The receptionist looked at me for a second and offered his smile to someone wearing a diamond in his tie.
‘Oui, monsieur,’ he retorted rapidly, looking at me again. ‘Incognito. C’est compris.’
I saw it would be impossible to make him listen to one more word, and due to his inordinate mental capacity he would end up not knowing that the Senyor did not want to be addressed as a prince because he had never been granted that title.
In exchange for having painted a truly malicious portrait of the concierge, I must admit that during the entire remaining week of our stay in Paris no one pronounced the word ‘Prince’ in our presence up to the moment we left the hotel.