The tram carried on and, strange to relate, I in turn continued to think about the unknown countess, of her cruel and suspicious consort and above all of the sinister man who, according to the doctor's emphatic expression, was on the point of causing a disaster in the house. Consider, reader, the nature of human thought: when Cascajares started to relate those events to me, I was annoyed at his importunity and heaviness, but my mind wasted little time in taking hold of that same subject, turning it upside down and right side up, a psychological process which did not cease to be stimulated by the regular motion of the tram and the dull and monotonous noise of its wheels polishing the iron of the rails.

But in the end I stopped thinking about what was of such little interest to me and, scanning with my eyes the inside of the tram, I examined one by one my travelling companions. What distinctive faces and what expressions! Some appeared not to be bothered in the least about those who were next to them. Some were happy, some were sad, this one was yawning, that one was laughing, and in spite of the journey's shortness, there was not a single one who did not want it to be over quickly, for among the thousand and one annoyances of our existence, none exceeds the one that consists in being a dozen people gazing at one another's faces without saying a word and mutually musing over their wrinkles, their moles or some anomaly noticed in a face or in clothing.

It is strange this short acquaintance with people that we have not seen before and will in all likelihood not see again. We already meet someone on entering and others arrive while we're still there. Passengers get off leaving us alone and finally we too alight. It's a mirror of human life itself in which birth and death are like the entrances and exits I've just mentioned for new generations of passengers come to populate the little world that lives inside the tram. They get on, they get off; they are born and they die. How many have passed through here before we have! How many more will succeed us! And for the resemblance to be even more complete there is also a small world of passions in miniature inside that big box.

Many go there that we feel instinctively to be excellent people and their appearance pleases us and we are even upset to see them go. Others, on the contrary, annoy us as soon as we look at them. We examine with a certain rancour their phrenological characteristics and feel a real pleasure when we see them go. And meanwhile the vehicle, an imitation of life, keeps going, always receiving and letting go, uniform, indefatigable, majestic, oblivious to what is happening inside it, without being moved very much by the barely stifled passions of dumb show. The tram is running, always running over the two interminable iron tracks, wide and slippery as centuries. I was thinking about this while the tram was going up the calle de Alcalá until the noise of my bundle of books falling on the floor pulled me back from the gulf of so many mixed up ruminations. I picked it up immediately and my eyes focused on the sheet of newspaper that was serving as a wrapper to the volumes and mechanically took in half a line of what was printed there. All of a sudden my curiosity was well and truly aroused. I had read something that interested me and certain names scattered through that scrap of a newspaper serial affected both my vision and my memory. I looked for the beginning and did not find it: the paper was torn and I could only read, with curiosity at first and afterwards more and more eagerly, what follows:

The countess felt indescribably agitated. The presence of Mudarra, the insolent butler, who had forgotten his humble beginnings to dare to cast his gaze on such a noble personage, was a continual source of anxiety to her. The scoundrel never stopped spying on her, watching her as a prison guard watches a prisoner. He already showed no deference to her and nor were the sensitivity and delicacy of such an excellent lady an obstacle to his entrapment of her. Mudarra made an untimely entrance into the private quarters of the countess, who, pale and agitated, feeling at one and the same time both shame and terror, did not have the strength t............