Nationalists -- Philippines -- Fiction; Philippine fiction (Spanish) -- Translations into English; Philippines -- History -- Fiction
Paulita was arrayed in a rich camisa and pañuelo of embroidered piña,
different from those she had worn that morning to the church. The gauzy
texture of the piña set off her shapely head, and the Indians who saw
her compared her to the moon surrounded by fleecy clouds. A silk
rose-colored skirt, caught up in rich and graceful folds by her little
hand, gave majesty to her erect figure, the movement of which,
harmonizing with her curving neck, displayed all the triumphs of vanity
and satisfied coquetry. Isagani appeared to be rather disgusted, for so
many curious eyes fixed upon the beauty of his sweetheart annoyed him.
The stares seemed to him robbery and the girl’s smiles faithlessness.
Juanito saw her and his hump increased when he spoke to her. Paulita
replied negligently, while Doña Victorina called to him, for Juanito
was her favorite, she preferring him to Isagani.
“What a girl, what a girl!” muttered the entranced Padre Camorra.
“Come, Padre, pinch yourself and let me alone,” said Ben-Zayb
fretfully.
“What a girl, what a girl!” repeated the friar. “And she has for a
sweetheart a pupil of mine, the boy I had the quarrel with.”
“Just my luck that she’s not of my town,” he added, after turning his
head several times to follow her with his looks. He was even tempted to
leave his companions to follow the girl, and Ben-Zayb had difficulty in
dissuading him. Paulita’s beautiful figure moved on, her graceful
little head nodding with inborn coquetry.
Our promenaders kept on their way, not without sighs on the part of the
friar-artilleryman, until they reached a booth surrounded by
sightseers, who quickly made way for them. It was a shop of little
wooden figures, of local manufacture, representing in all shapes and
sizes the costumes, races, and occupations of the country: Indians,
Spaniards, Chinese, mestizos, friars, clergymen, government clerks,
gobernadorcillos, students, soldiers, and so on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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