Had the poor woman been only thirty and one instead of thirty and two summers--the difference according to her mode of reckoning was great--she would have restored to Destiny the award it offered her to wait for another more suited to her taste, but since man proposes and necessity disposes, she saw herself obliged in her great need for a husband to content herself with a poor fellow who had been cast out from Estremadura [116] and who, after wandering about the world for six or seven years like a modern Ulysses, had at last found on the island of Luzon hospitality and a withered Calypso for his better half.

This unhappy mortal, by name Tiburcio Espadana, was only thirty-five years of age and looked like an old man, yet he was, nevertheless, younger than Dona Victorina, who was only thirty-two.

The reason for this is easy to understand but dangerous to state.
Don Tiburcio had come to the Philippines as a petty official in the Customs, but such had been his bad luck that, besides suffering severely from seasickness and breaking a leg during the voyage, he had been dismissed within a fortnight, just at the time when he found himself without a cuarto.

After his rough experience on the sea he did not care to return to Spain without having made his fortune, so he decided to devote himself to something.

Spanish pride forbade him to engage in manual labor, although the poor fellow would gladly have done any kind of work in order to earn an honest living.