Worn out by time and hardships, her former beauty--piquant in a way,
though a bit common--soon faded away. The sun tanned her skin; the dust
of the country roads got into her hair, once so clean and wavy; hard
work toughened and deformed her hands, which in better days she had well
cared for. She gave over wearing corsets, and this hastened the ruin of
her body. Slowly her breasts grew flaccid, her abdomen bulged, her whole
figure took on heavy fullnesses. And her clothes, too, bit by bit got
torn and spoiled. Her petticoats and stockings, her neat patent-leather
boots bought in happier days, disappeared sadly, one after the other.
Rafaela, who had lost all desire to be coquettish or to please men, let
herself slide into poverty; and, in the end, she sank so low as to slop
round the village streets, barefooted.

This disintegration of her will coincided with a serious loss and
confusion of her memory. The poor woman began to forget everything; and
the few recollections she still retained grew so disjointed, so vague
that they no longer were able to arouse any stimulating emotion in her.
She had never really loved Berlanga. What she had felt for him had been
only a kind of caprice, an unreasoning will o' the wisp passion; but
this amorous dalliance had soon faded out. And the only reason she had
kept on with the silversmith had been because she had been afraid of him
and had been weak-willed. The smith, moreover, had become jealous and
had often beaten her. Thus his tragic death, far from causing her any
grief, had come to her as an agreeable surprise. It had quieted her,
rested her, freed her.

If the punishment of Zureda and his confinement in prison walls wounded
her deeply, it was not on account of her broken love for the engineer.
No, rather was it because this disaster had disturbed the easy,
comfortable rhythm of her life and because the exile of her husband had
meant misery for her, poverty, the irremediable overthrow of her whole
future.

After the crisis which had wrecked her home, Rafaela--hardly noticing
it, herself--had grown stupid, old and of defective memory. The many
violent and dramatic shocks she had borne in so short a time had
annihilated her mediocre spirit. She suffered no remorse and had no very
clear idea as to whether her past conduct had been good or bad. It was
as if her conscience had sunk away into unthinking stupor. The only
thing that still remained in her, unchanged, was the maternal