This time Daniel let Alicia walk ahead, waiting until she’d gone up a whole flight of stairs before following her. Clearly he didn’t want to be climbing up two stories with his eyes caught on her swaying hips.

The arrival of the cake was greeted with an ovation and shouts reminiscent of a great sporting victory. Daniel raised the box for all to see as if he were displaying an Olympic medal, and then took it to the kitchen. Alicia noticed that Bea had kept a place for her between Sofía and little Julián, who was sitting next to his grandfather. She took her seat, aware that the guests were casting her sidelong glances. When Daniel returned from the kitchen, he sat at the other end of the table, next to Bea.

“Shall I serve the soup, then, or shall we wait for Fermín?” Bernarda asked.

“I’d say he’s the one who’ll land in the soup if we don’t eat soon,” proclaimed Don Anacleto.

Bernarda had begun to fill the soup bowls when they heard a crash behind the door and the echo of various glass bottles tumbling down. A few seconds later, a triumphant Fermín materialized, carrying, two in each hand, the bottles of champagne, miraculously saved.

“Fermín, you had us drinking sour muscatel,” protested Don Anacleto.

“Throw out that foul drink that is tarnishing your goblets, ladies and gentlemen,” announced Fermín, “for the wine vendor hath just arrived from yonder vineyard to delight your palate with a beverage that will make you urinate flowers.”

“Fermín!” cried Bernarda. “Your language!”

“But, my little rosebud, don’t you know that on this riverbank micturating to leeward is as natural and pleasurable as—”

Fermín’s loquacity and rhetoric suddenly froze. Stock-still, he was staring at Alicia as if he’d just seen a ghost. Daniel grabbed his arm and forced him to sit down.

“Come on, let’s eat,” announced Señor Sempere, who had also noticed Fermín’s momentary lapse.

The choreography of glasses, laughter, and jokes began to take over, but Fermín, who held his empty spoon in his hand and couldn’t keep his eyes off Alicia, was as silent as a tomb. Alicia pretended to be unaware, but even Bea was beginning to look uncomfortable. Daniel nudged Fermín and whispered something quickly in his ear. Tensely, Fermín sipped a spoonful of soup. Fortunately, although the trademark eloquence of the bibliographic adviser to Sempere & Sons had been silenced by Alicia’s presence, Don Anacleto’s tongue was living a second youth thanks to the champagne, and soon they were all regaled with his customary analysis of the country’s ills.

The teacher, who saw himself as the sentimental heir and bearer of the eternal flame of Don Miguel de Unamuno (with whom he shared a more than remarkable physical resemblance), began, as usual, to present an apocalyptic panorama, announcing the imminent sinking of the Iberian Peninsula into the oceans of the blackest ignominy. Fermín, who normally enjoyed undercutting Don Anacleto’s improvised table talk with sly remarks like “The index of punditry in a society is inversely proportional to its intellectual solvency” and “When people choose overheated opinions over cold facts, the social order reverts to a moronocracy,” was so unforthcoming that the teacher, having no rivals or opposition, tried to wind him up.