all the ladies admired her waist. And I wanted to be like Mama! Oh, and what ribbons adorned my new dress! One on the décolletage, three on the skirt, one in my hair, and all of them as pink as geranium flowers. No, more like tender carnations. That day I barely touched my lunch, I was so anxious to start getting ready for the party, which was to be held in my honor: to have a perfumed bath, to wash my hair, to anoint myself with rose water, and then, when I was finished, to put on that dress. I was ready by five in the afternoon, although the dinner did not begin until eight o’clock. There were three hours until Mama would see me with my new dress. I wore my hair loose, and at that time it reached down to the ground and was as curly as a bunch of eels. I got it into my head that I wanted to look like my mother’s little sister, or a younger friend. I couldn’t stop imagining how she would invite me to preside over the table to show all her guests how proud she was of me, how when the time came to serve drinks she would say to the serving maid: d’abord to the little duchess Maria Teresa, s’il vous plaît. And the maid would walk right around the long table, past dozens of seated guests, and serve me a little bit of the sweet wine that would pour slowly from the bottle, like a garnet necklace, into the tall wine glass, and dye it the color of blood. I would spend the entire evening sipping that blood like a great lady. When I was dressed and powdered, coiffured and perfumed, I walked from one end of the house to the other. I went up and down the palace stairs; I contemplated myself in the mirrors on the landings and in the halls; I bowed and curtsied. I had never before worn such a tight-fitting dress. Later, I watched the maids lay the table. Right in the middle, on the pale rose-colored tablecloth, they had arranged a centerpiece of lilacs, which at that time of year were starting to bloom in our garden. It was of the same color as my dress, sky blue, no, lilac blue, and they had decorated it with pink ribbons like those on my dress. My dishes, and mine alone, were decorated with little clusters of lilac.
Finally the guests began to arrive, wishing me many happy returns and kissing me while I fretted that the white powder would come off my cheeks and the perfume of rose water would fade. I kept a lookout for Mama although I knew that her triumphant entrance would put an end to my pleasure at being the center of attention. And the fact is that Mother always became the focus of attention because she was the most beautiful, the most elegant and refined, the kind of woman for whom, when she entered a salon, the musicians stopped playing, so dazzled were they. And then I made a firm resolution that would be the aim of my life: to stop the music playing when I entered a salon.
My grandfather bid the guests welcome. He was all dressed up, his chest gleaming with orders and medals: a military man who had earned his merits, Capitán General. He looked so fine! How proud I was to have him. I thought that when I was grownup, I would marry only a general, strong and good-looking, who would proudly wear the uniform that makes men look so beautiful. But quite the opposite happened: they married me to a man who was neither strong nor good-looking, and who wore no uniform. I think that if my grandfather wore his gala uniform on the day of my birthday, it was only to make things pleasant for me, to make me happy, because as a rule he never dressed with the pomp that was customary in Madrid, but in a simpler fashion. I suppose that this was out of respect for the authors who were banned in Spain, and who I also imagined dressed in a simple, humble fashion, all those French encyclopedists: Diderot, d’Alembert, Voltaire, and, above all, grandfather’s great friend Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The guests were now in the salons and we had only to wait for my parents. People formed groups and conversed, and I told myself that when I was grown-up, beautiful, and