彼得羅·德·阿拉爾貢/Pedro de Alarcon
彼得羅·德·阿拉爾貢（1838—1891），出生在西班牙的安達盧西亞，那裏曾出過許多知名的西班牙作家。阿拉爾貢早年學習法律，後投筆從戎，立下戰功，被授予聖菲爾南多十字勳章。之後，他又開始了寫作生涯，曾經寫過劇本、小說和詩歌，其作品深受人們喜愛。
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!"
One afternoon he decided on the sacrifice. He pointed to the ripest of his beloved pumpkins, which had cost him so much effort, and said the terrible words, "Tomorrow I will cut these forty and take them to the Cadiz market. Happy is the man who will eat them!" And he walked back to the house with slow steps, and spent the night with the agony of a father who is going to marry off his daughter on the following day. "My poor dear pumpkins!" He sighed again and again, unable to fall asleep. But then he thought, "What else can I do but sell them? I cultivated them for that purpose. At least I will receive fifteen duros for them."
Imagine then his extreme astonishment, fury and desperation when, going the following morning to the farm, he discovered that he had been robbed during the night of his forty pumpkins. To save time I will merely say that he was filled with tragic fury and that he repeated again and again the terrible words, "Oh, if I catch you, if I catch you!"