Hungarian customs

Hungarian Customs is a story by José María Blanco White with an infinite adventure. It begins with a boat tour of the Thames, then the plot revels in the scenery and nostalgically evokes Spain. And so among the landscape emerges the character that will serve as an alibi for the story and the various adventures that will happen.
The narrator and the protagonist go to the latter’s house and there a painting redirects the story to Vienna, where the protagonist has spent his youth. It is then the moment when he narrates a dramatic love story passed during a youth trip to Hungary. And it seems that the Hungarian Customs end up being dramatic in the extreme…

“One summer day, when the uncertain sky of England had dawned with the very sweet aspect it sometimes takes, I availed myself of one of the steamboats that in that station go up the river daily, from the Tower of London to the beautiful town of Richmond. A light wind from the south-west gave the waters and leaves the necessary movement, and no more, to remove the macilent stillness that English country scenes take, on days of heat and calm, because of the humidity of which the atmosphere abounds. Shortly after waiting for the shore, amused by the scene of activity that the vicinity of London presents at all hours, I discovered, above the immediate lathe, the movable column of smoke that indicated the proximity of the ship; and shortly he appeared, majestically cutting the waters, surrounded by the foam formed by the fins of the wheels; In short, with more the appearance of a sea monster that moves at its own discretion than of an inanimate machine to whom the ingenuity of man gives impulse. I put myself in a small boat and straightened towards the ship, which at once restrained the impetus with which it was going, as if it were preparing to receive the new cargo in its own way.”

Fragment of the work