Old Buscabeatas' back began to curve during the period of which I am going to tell, and the reason was that he was sixty years old, forty of which had been spent working a piece of ground on the banks of the River Costilla. That year he had cultivated on his farm a crop of enormous pumpkins, and these pumpkins had attained an orange color both inside and out, which showed that it was now the month of June. Buscabeatas knew each one of them perfectly by its form, its state of ripeness, and even by its name, especially the forty which were fattest and richest in colour. He spent all his days gazing at them tenderly, and sadly exclaiming, "Soon we shall have to part!"