The House of Ulloa (Penguin Classics)

From close up, the Limioso manor looked as though it was uninhabited, and that increased the melancholy impression given by the dilapidated dovecote.

When seen together, an extraordinary likeness between Señor de la Lage and his nephew became noticeable: the same lofty stature; the same wide build; the same large bone-structure; the same coarse, thick beard. But what in the nephew was harmonious and titanic, strengthened by an active life in the open air, in the uncle, who was condemned to a sedentary life, was excessive: there just seemed to be too much of him. Without being what is called obese, he somehow overflowed in every part of his body: each foot looked like a barge, each hand like a carpenter’s mallet. He suffocated in a suit. He simply did not fit in small rooms. Squeezed into a theatre seat he would gasp, while in church he poked right and left with his elbows to make more room for himself. A magnificent specimen of a race bred to fight wars and live in the mountains, was wasting miserably away in a small town, where he who produces nothing, teaches nothing, and learns nothing, is no use to anyone and spends his days in despicable idleness. What a waste! Had that pure-blooded Pardo de la Lage been born in the fifteenth century, he would have given plenty for archaeologists and historians of the nineteenth century to think about!

She had found him hidden in the cow-manger, his favourite place, and the little devil’s curls had grass and wild flowers woven into them. He looked beautiful, and the bandage over the wound made him look even more like a Cupid