usual course: the Duchess of Osuna came to visit me and I returned her visit, I took part in the lever, the elaborate mourning ceremony of the queen—the hypocrisy of the court has no limits!—and also in her teas, dinners, chocolate sessions, round tables, and walks. I listened to the king scratching at his violin, as well as to the Haydn quartets and sonatas that my husband played, my talented if henpecked spouse, that little-slipper husband whom I put on and removed with a kick as it struck my fancy. I appeared to listen to the queen’s gossip about the Duchess of Osuna while knowing perfectly well that each and every one of them was exchanging gossip about me with great delight. I scoffed at them all because I had nothing better to do, and even laughing at them had long since become tedious to me.
Brother Basilio! My poor little one, my little hunchback! How old must that sanctimonious soul have been? Any figure between twenty and sixty. He was lame and stuttered; I would have devoured him with kisses. I loved him more than my dog and my monkey, more than María de la Luiz, my little black girl. That day, it was summer in Piedrahíta, when we had gone out for a walk and he fell behind on his little donkey. How worried I was about him! Did you come with us that day, María? No, you were old already; you couldn’t ride. You were at home praying, confess it! That day we went out and, once in the wood, my husband and I found ourselves alone. We waited and my Basilio didn’t turn up; we also appeared to have lost the servants. I followed the path back and I saw Basilio, sunk in the mud in a hole. He was waving his crutch and with each move he made he sunk a little more. The other crutch was swimming in the mud, far from him. The man was barely able to move any longer, he was sunk in right up to the waist. And my servants all around him, haw haw haw! ha ha ha!, doubling up with laughter, to the point of tears. Instantly I made all of them go into the muddy hole to get him out! Consuelo, our cook, and then my confidante, told me that Basilio had seen a little calf that was drowning in the mud and not far away her mother who was mooing in the saddest of ways. Basilio went into the mud, pulled out the calf, and then the cow began to frighten him. Apparently she threatened to charge him with her horns. She took the calf from him, and then forced Basilio back into the muddy hole. Haw haw haw! Consuelo burst out laughing.
I slapped her so hard that she herself almost fell into the mud, and then I went from one servant to another, slapping them all and spitting in their faces. When my husband tried to calm me down, I became even more furious and he too was slapped on the cheek, in front of all the servants.
I summoned my carriage and had Basilio sit, and we went back together to the palace. I myself disrobed the hunchback, bathed and dried him, rubbed him with scented oils, dressed him again, and all the time I didn’t stop giving him little kisses. Once we were sitting on the sofa of the salon eating cakes washed down with muscatel, Basilio confided to me that my servants talked about me saying that he, the cripple Friar Basilio, was one of my lovers. That these scum spoke badly of me, the same people to whom I behaved like a friend and had wanted to bequeath my worldly goods to in my testament, made me indignant to the extent that I then made Basilio my lover. María, do you remember a night when I vomited without stopping, and when there was nothing more to spew? I vomited saliva mixed with blood?
I am getting senile, María. At that period I hadn’t even met Francisco! As I come closer to death now, my sense of time falters. Or maybe I did know him then? Wasn’t that when he painted that picture that seems playful at first glance, in which he depicts me as a bride and Basilio as a repulsive bridegroom who follows me tamely, poor thing? Francisco didn’t know anything; gossip didn’t interest him. And yet, he saw clearly everything that was