El vejamen / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Affront

     I omitted the name of the Florentine beauty when I referred the story of her perfidy with one of the pages of the Decameron. The woman had allowed me, with such reserve, to celebrate her display of ingenuity and I was able to contribute an issue to the magisterial rhetoric of Boccaccio. I proposed to divulge the disappointment of a presumptuous and gallant young man.

     The story spread quickly and found cheerful auditoriums and awoke malignant elucidations. From whence was born the rancor of the one who was mocked and his asperity toward my reputation.

     He approached to defy me in my own house, at the close of the night, and was frightened off by the fierce gesture of an automaton posted at the entrance stairwell and destined for the task of figurine in a peasant festival.

     This occurrence freed me and I found myself in the event of transmitting it to the braggarts and pedants of the Comedy of Art. The generous Boccaccio had regretted his own hilarity.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }