Very well, but - who are you?' again asked Gil Gil, in whom curiosity was beginning to get the better of every other feeling.
'I told you that when I first spoke to you - I am your friend. And bear in mind that you are the only being on the face of the earth to whom I accord the title of friend. I am bound to you by remorse! I am the cause of all your misfortunes.'
'I do not know you,' replied the shoemaker.
'And yet I have entered your house many times! Through me you were left motherless at your birth; I was the cause of the apoplectic stroke that killed Juan Gil; it was I who turned you out of the palace of Rionuevo; I assassinated your old house-mate, and, finally, it was I who placed in your pocket the vial of sulfuric acid.'
Gil Gil trembled like a leaf; he felt his hair stand on end, and it seemed to him as if his contracted muscles must burst asunder.
'You are the devil!' he exclaimed, with indescribable terror.
'Child!' responded the black-robed figure in accents of amiable censure, 'what has put that idea into your head? I am something greater and better than the wretched being you have named.'
'Who are you, then?'
'Let us go into the inn and you shall learn.'
Gil hastily entered, drew the Unknown before the modest lantern that lighted the apartment, and looked at him with intense curiosity.
He was a person about thirty-three years old; tall, handsome, pale, dressed in a long black tunic and a black mantle, and his long locks were covered by a Phrygian cap, also black. He had not the slightest sign of a beard, yet he did not look like a woman. Neither did he look like a man... ("The Friend of Death")
— Pedro Antonio de Alarcón
#death #devil #death
