er off.... It couldn't have been
otherwise. They marry only among themselves... and that girl has lots of
money."

Aguirre did not sleep a wink that night; he lay awake planning the most
horrible deeds of vengeance. In any other country he knew what he would
do; he would insult the Jew, slap him, fight a duel, kill him; and if
the man did not respond to such provocation, he would pursue him until
he left the field free.... But he lived here in another world; a country
that was ignorant of the knightly procedure of ancient peoples. A
challenge to a duel would cause laughter, like something silly and
extravagant. He could, of course, attack his enemy right in the street,
bring him to his knees and kill him if he tried to defend himself. But
ah! English justice did not recognize love nor did it accept the
existence of crimes of passion. Yonder, half way up the slope of the
mountain, in the ruins of the castle that had been occupied by the
Moorish kings of Gibraltar, he had seen the prison, filled with men from
all lands, especially Spaniards, incarcerated for life because they had
drawn the poniard under the impulse of love or jealousy, just as they
were accustomed to doing a few metres further on, at the other side of
the boundary. The whip worked with the authorization of the law; men
languished and died turning the wheel of the pump. A cold, methodical
cruelty, a thousand times worse than the fanatic savagery of the
Inquisition, devoured human creatures, giving them nothing more than the
exact amount of sustenance necessary to prolong their torture.... No.
This was another world, where his jealousy and his fury could find no
vent. And he would have to lose Luna without a cry of protest, without a
gesture of manly rebellion!...Now, upon beholding himself parted from
her, he felt for the first time the genuine importance of his love; a
love that had been begun as a pastime, through an exotic curiosity, and
which was surely going to upset his entire existence... What was he to
do?

He recalled the words of one of those inhabitants of Gibraltar who had
accompanied him on Royal Street,--a strange mixture of Andalusian
sluggishness and British apathy.

"Take my word for it, friend, the chief Rabbi and those of the synagogue
have a hand in this. You were scandalizing them; everybody saw you
making love in public. You don't realize how important one of these
fellows is. They enter the homes of the faithful and run everything