; the future smiled on us; we had many servants; our
fields bore good crops; and my sister was on the eve of being married
to a young man who loved her and to whom she was well suited. On
account of some pecuniary questions, and, because my character was
then haughty, I lost the good will of a distant relative, and he
threw in my face one day my dark birth and my infamous ancestry. I
thought it a calumny and demanded satisfaction. The tomb in which so
much grief was sleeping was opened again and the truth came out. I
was confounded. To make the misfortune greater, we had had for some
years an old servant who had always suffered all my caprices without
ever leaving us. He contented himself by weeping and crying while
the other servants jested with him. I do not know how my relative
found it out; the fact is that he summoned this old man before the
court and made him tell the truth. The old servant was my father,
who had stuck fast to his dear children and whom I had maltreated many
times. Our happiness disappeared: I renounced our fortune; my sister
lost her lover; and with our father we abandoned the town to go to
some other point. The thought of having contributed to our disgrace
and misfortune, cut short the life of the old man, from whose lips
was learned all the sorrowful past. My sister and I were left alone.

"She wept a great deal, but, amid such grief as they piled upon us,
she could not forget her love. Without complaining, without saying a
word, she saw her old lover marry another girl, and I saw her a little
later gradually become ill, without being able to console her. One
day she disappeared. In vain I searched for her everywhere; in vain
I asked for her for six months. Afterward I learned that during the
time while I was searching for her, one day when the water had risen
in the lake, there had been found on the beach at Calamba the body of
a girl, either drowned or assassinated. She had, they say, a knife
piercing her breast. The authorities of Calamba published the fact
in the neighboring towns. Nobody presented himself to claim the body;
no young woman had disappeared. From the description which they gave
me afterward, from the dress, the rings, the beauty of her face and
her very abundant hair, I recognized her as my poor sister. From that
time, I have been wandering from province to province. My fame and
history are in the mouths of many people; they attribute all sorts
of deeds to me; at times they c