In my agitated dream I had changed position and had allowed myself to fall on the venerable English lady who was travelling next to me. "Aah! You—sleeping—disturb me," she said, making a sour face, while she pushed away from her my bundle of books which had fallen onto her knees.

"Madam, it's true. I fell asleep," I replied, embarrassed to see that all the passengers were laughing at this scene.

"Oh! I tell driver—you disturb me—very shocking," the English woman added in her incomprehensible gibberish: "Oh! You think my body is your bed for you to sleep. Oh! Gentleman, you are a stupid ass."

On saying this, this daughter of Britannia, who already had a ruddy complexion, blushed red as a tomato. You might have thought that the blood that had rushed to her cheeks and her nose was flowing from her incandescent pores. She showed me four sharp and very white teeth as if she wanted to bite me. I asked of her a thousand pardons for the discourtesy of falling asleep, picked up my bundle and reviewed the new faces that there now were in the tram.

Imagine, oh calm and kind reader, when I saw facing me—guess who? the young man I had just finished dreaming about, Don Rafael in the flesh. I rubbed my eyes to convince myself that I was not still asleep and found myself awake, as awake as I am now. He it was and he was talking to someone else who was travelling with him. I paid attention and listened as hard as I could:

"But didn't you suspect anything?" the other person said to him.

"Something, yes. But I held my tongue. She looked petrified with terror. Her husband ordered her to play the piano and she did not dare to resist. She played, as always, admirably, and, as I listened to her, I managed to forget the dangerous situation in which we fo............