THE ADUANA DE SANTO DOMINGO
for her—he had energy that she could arouse and could set a-going in practically useful ways. And her reasoning was this wise: that if Don Juan could be stirred by her urgence to do useful work with vigor, then was it likely that her urgence would arouse him from all his apathies and so would recast him into the sort of husband that she desired to have. Therefore Doña Sara told Don Juan that she would marry him only on one condition; and that her condition was that he should finish completely the long-drawn-out building of the Aduana within six months from that very day! And Don Juan, Señor, was so furiously in love with Doña Sara that in the same instant that she gave him her condition he accepted it; and he—who never had done a hand's turn of work in all his lifetime—promised her that he would do the almost impossible piece of work that she had set him to do: and that the Aduana should be finished completely within six months from that very day!
And then all the City was amazed—and so, for that matter, Don Juan himself was—by the fire and the force and the breathless eagerness with which he set himself to the task that
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