Po Baroja

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CHAPTER I

The Studio—The Life Led by Roberto Hasting—Alex MonzÓn

Roberto had got out of bed. Dressed in his street clothes, seated before a table heaped with documents, he was writing.

The room was a low-ceiled garret, with a large window that overlooked a patio. The centre of the room was occupied by two clay statues with an inner framework of wire,—two figures of more than natural size, huge and fantastic, both merely sketched, as if the artist had been unable to complete them; they were two giants exhausted by weariness, with small, clean-shaven heads, sunken chests, bulging stomachs and long, simian arms. They seemed crushed by a profound dejection. Before the wide window extended a sofa covered with flowered percaline; on the chairs and upon the floor lay statues half swathed in damp cloths; in one corner stood a box filled with dry bits of scagliola, and in a corner, a tub of clay.

From time to time Roberto would glance at a pocket watch placed upon the table amidst his papers. Then he would get up and pace for a while up and down the room. Through the window he could see tattered, filthy women moving about in the galleries of the houses across the way; up from the street rose a deafening racket of cries from the huckstresses and the peddlers.

Roberto, however, was not at all disturbed by the continuous din, and after a short while would resume his seat and continue writing.

In the meantime Manuel was climbing and descending every stairway in the neighbourhood, in search of Roberto Hasting.

Manuel was inspired with the earnest resolution to change his mode of living; he felt capable now of embracing an energetic determination and carrying it through to the end.

His elder sister, who had just married a fireman, had presented him with a pair of torn trousers that her husband had discarded, an old jacket and a frayed muffler. To these she had added a cap of most absurd shape and colour, a battered derby and a few vague bits of good advice concerning industriousness, which, as everyone knows, is the father of all virtues, just as the horse is the noblest of animals and idleness the mother of all vice.

It is quite possible—almost certain—that Manuel would have preferred to these kindly, vague counsels, this cap of absurd shape and colour, this old jacket, this frayed muffler and the pair of outworn trousers, a tiny sum of money, whether in small change, silver or bills.

Such is youth; it has neither goal nor compass; ever improvident, it imputes greater value to material gifts than to spiritual, unable in its utter ignorance to realize that a coin is spent, a bill is changed, and both may be lost, while a piece of good advice may neither be spent nor changed, nor reduced to small change, possessing furthermore the advantage that without the slightest expenditure or care it lasts forever, without mildewing or deteriorating. Whatever his preferences may have been, Manuel had to be satisfied with what he got.

With this ballast of good advice and bad clothing, unable to detect a gleam of light on his way, Manuel ran over mentally the short list of his acquaintances, and it occurred to him that of them all, Roberto Hasting was the only one likely to help him.

Penetrated with this truth, which to him was of supreme importance, he went off in quest of his friend. At the barracks they had not seen him for some time; DoÑa Casiana, the proprietress of the boarding-house, whom Manuel came upon in the street one day, knew nothing of Roberto’s whereabouts, and suggested that perhaps the Superman would be able to tell.

“Does he still live at your place?”

“No. I got tired of his never paying his bills. I don’t know where he lives; but you can always find him at the office of El Mundo, a newspaper over on the Calle de Valverde. There’s a sign on the balcony.”

Manuel set out for a newspaper office on the Calle de Valverde and found it at once. He walked up the steps to the main floor and paused before a door with a large glass pane, on which were depicted two worlds,—the old and the new. There was neither bell nor knocker, so Manuel began to drum with his fingers upon the glass pane, directly upon the area of the new world, and was surprised in this selfsame occupation by the Superman, who had just come from the street.

“What are you doing here?” asked the journalist, eyeing him from top to toe. “Who are you?”

“I’m Manuel, Petra’s son. The woman who worked at the boarding-house. Don’t you remember?”

“Ah, yes!... And what do you want?”

“I’d like you to tell me whether you know where Don Roberto lives. I believe he’s now a writer for the newspapers.”

“And who is Don Roberto?”

“That blonde chap.... The student who was a friend of Don Telmo’s.”

“Oh, that lit’r’y kid?... How should I know?”

“Not even where he works?”

“I think he is an instructor at Fischer’s academy.”

“I don’t know where that academy is.”

“It seems to me it’s on the Plaza de Isabel II,” replied the Superman sullenly, as he opened the glass door with a latch-key and walked inside.

Manuel hunted up the academy. Here an attendant informed him that Roberto lived in the Calle del EspÍritu Santo, at number 21 or 23, he could not say exactly which, on a top floor, where there was a sculptor’s studio.

Manuel sought out the Calle del EspÍritu Santo; the geography of this section of Madrid was somewhat hazy to him. It took him a little time to locate the street, which at this hour was thronged with people. The market-women, ranged in a row on both sides of the thoroughfare, cried their kidney-beans and their tomatoes at the top of their lungs; the maidservants tripped by in their white aprons with their baskets on their arms; the dry-goods clerks, leaning against the shop-doors, swapped gossip with the pretty cooks; the bakers threaded their way hurriedly through the maze, balancing their baskets upon their heads; and the coming and going of the crowd, the shouting of one and the other, merged into a medley of deafening sound and variegated, picturesque spectacle.

Manuel, elbowing his way through the surging throng and the baskets of tomatoes, asked after Roberto at the houses that had been indicated; the janitresses, however, knew no such fellow, and there was nothing left but to climb to the upper stories and enquire there.

After several ascents he located the sculptor’s studio. At the top of a dark, dirty staircase he stumbled into a passageway where a group of old women were chatting.

“Don Roberto Hasting? A gentleman who lives in a sculptor’s studio?”

“It must be that door over there.”

Manuel opened the door half way, peered in and discovered Roberto at his writing.

“Hello. Is that you?” greeted Roberto. “What’s up?”

“I came to see you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How are you getting along?”

“I’m at the end of my rope.”

“What do you mean,—end of your rope?”

“Out of work.”

“And your uncle?”

“Oh, it’s some time since I left him.”

“How did that happen?”

Manuel recounted his troubles. Then, seeing that Roberto continued rapidly writing, he grew silent.

“You may go on,” murmured Hasting. “I listen as I write. I have to finish a certain assignment by tomorrow, so I must hurry. But I am listening.”

Manuel, despite the invitation, did not go on with his story. He gazed at the two grotesque, distorted giants that occupied the middle of the studio, and was astounded. Roberto, who noticed Manuel’s stupefaction, asked him, laughing:

“What do you think of it?”

“How should I know. It’s enough to scare anybody. What’s the meaning of those men?”

“The artist calls them The Exploited. He intends them to represent the toilers exhausted by their labour. The theme is hardly apt for Spain.”

Roberto went on with his writing. Manuel removed his glance from the two huge figures and inspected the room. There was nothing sumptuous about it; it was not even comfortable. It struck Manuel that the student’s affairs were not progressing very favourably.

Roberto cast a hurried glance at his watch, dropped his pen, arose, and strode around the room. His elegant appearance contrasted with the wretched furnishings.

“Who told you where I lived?” he asked.

“Someone over at the academy.”

“And who told you where the academy was?”

“The Superman.”

“Ah! The great LangairiÑos.... And tell me: how long have you been out of work?”

“A few days.”

“What do you intend to do?”

“Whatever turns up.”

“And if nothing turns up?”

“I think something will.”

Roberto smiled banteringly.

“How Spanish that is! Waiting for something to turn up. Forever waiting.... But, after all, it’s not your fault. Listen to me. If you can’t find a place where to sleep during the next few days, stay here.”

“Fine. Many thanks. And your inheritance, Don Roberto? How is it coming?”

“Getting along little by little. Within a year you’ll behold me a rich man.”

“I’ll be happy to see the day.”

“I told you already that I imagined there was a plot on the part of the priests in this affair. Well, that’s exactly how the matter stands. Don FermÍn NÚÑez de Letona, the priest, founded ten chaplaincies for relations of his bearing the same name. Knowing this, I inquired about these chaplaincies at the Bishopric; they knew nothing; several times I asked for the baptismal certificate of Don FermÍn at Labraz; they told me that no such name appeared there. So, a month ago, in order to clear up the matter, I went to Labraz.”

“You left Madrid?”

“Yes. I spent a thousand pesetas. In the situation I’m now in, you may easily imagine what a thousand pesetas mean to me. But I didn’t mind spending them. It was worth it. I went, as I told you, to Labraz; I saw the baptismal register in the old church and I discovered a gap in the book between the years 1759 and 1760. ‘What’s this?’ I said to myself. I looked; I looked again; there was no sign of a page having been torn out; the number of the folios was all in due order, yet the years did not agree. And do you know what was the matter? One page was glued to the other. Thereupon I proceeded to the Seminary of Pamplona and succeeded in finding a list of the students who attended toward the end of the XVIIIth century. On that list is Don FermÍn, who signs himself NÚÑez de Letona, Labraz (Alava). So that Don FermÍn’s baptismal certificate is on that pasted page.”

“Then why didn’t you have the page unglued?”

“No. Who can tell what would happen then? I might scare away the game. Let the book stay there. I have sent my script to London; when the letters requisitorial arrive, the Tribunal will name three experts to go to Labraz, and before them in the presence of the Judge and the Notary, the pages will be unglued.”

Roberto, as always when he spoke of his fortune, went into an ecstasy; his imagination opened wonderful vistas of wealth, luxury, marvellous travels. In the midst of his enthusiasm and his illusions, however, the practical man would intrude; he would glance at his watch, at once calm down, and return to his writing.

Manuel arose.

“What? Are you leaving?” asked Roberto.

“Yes. What am I going to do here?”

“If you haven’t the price of lunch, take this peseta. I can’t spare more.”

“And how about you?”

“I eat at one of my pupils’ houses. Listen: if you come here to sleep, let my companion know beforehand. He’ll be here in a moment. He hasn’t got up yet. His name is Alejo MonzÓn, but they call him Alex.”

“Very good. Yes, sir.”

Manuel breakfasted on bread and cheese and within a short while returned to the studio. A chubby fellow with a thick, black beard, wearing a white smock, with a pipe in his mouth, was modelling a nude Venus in plaster.

“Are you Don Alejo?” Manuel asked him.

“Yes. What do you wish?”

“I am a friend of Don Roberto’s, and I came to see him today. I told him I was out of work and homeless, and he said I might sleep here.”

“You’ll have to use the sofa,” replied the man in the white smock, “for there’s no other bed.”

“That’s all right, I’m used to it.”

“So! Have you anything special to do?”

“No.”

“Well, suppose you step on to the platform, then; you can serve as my model. Sit down on this box. So. Now rest your head on your hand as if you were thinking of something. Fine. That’s excellent. Look up a bit higher. That’s it.”

The sculptor sat down, with a single blow of his fist smashed the Venus that he had been modelling, and began upon another figure.

Manuel soon grew weary of posing and told Alex, who said that he might rest.

In the middle of the afternoon a group of the sculptor’s friends invaded the garret; two of them rolled up their sleeves and began to heap up clay on a table; one long-haired fellow sat down upon the sofa. Shortly afterward a fresh contingent arrived and they all began to talk at the top of their voices.

They mentioned and discussed a number of things, concerning painting, sculpture, plays. Manuel imagined that they must be important personages.

They had everybody pigeon-holed. So-and-so was admirable; Such-and-such was detestable; A was a genius; B, an imbecile.

Of a surety they had no use for middle tints and middle terms; they seemed to be the arbiters of opinion,—juries and judges over everything.

At nightfall they prepared to leave.

“Are you going out?” asked the sculptor of Manuel.

“I’ll go out for a moment, just to get supper.”

“All right. Here’s the key. I’ll be back around twelve, and I’ll knock.”

“Very well.”

Manuel ate another meal of bread and cheese and then took a stroll through the streets. After night had fallen he returned to the studio. It was cold up there,—colder than in the street. He groped his way to the sofa, stretched himself out and awaited the sculptor’s return. It was nearly one when Alex knocked at the door and Manuel opened for him.

Alex came back in an ugly mood. He went to his alcove, lighted a candle and began to pace about the room, talking to himself.

“That idiot of a Santiuste,” Manuel heard him mutter, “says that not completing a work of art is a sign of impotence. And he looked at me as he spoke! But why should I pay any attention to what that idiot says?”

Since nobody could gave a satisfactory reply to the sculptor’s query, he continued to measure the length of the room, bewailing in a loud voice the stupidity and the enviousness of his comrades.

Then, his fury abated, he took the candle, brought it close to the group called The Exploited, and examined it for a long time minutely. He saw that Manuel was not asleep, and asked him frankly:

“Have you ever seen anything more colossal than this?”

“It’s a mighty rare thing,” answered Manuel.

“I should say it is!” replied Alex. “It possesses the rareness of all works of genius. I don’t know whether there’s anybody in the world capable of producing the like. Rodin, maybe. H’m.... Who can say? Where do you think I’d place this group?”

“I don’t know.”

“In a desert. On a pedestal of rough, unadorned, squared granite. What an effect it would produce. Hey?”

“I should imagine.”

Alex took Manuel’s astonishment for admiration, so, with the candle in his hand, he went from one statue to another, removing the cloths that covered them and exhibiting them to the boy.

They were horrible, monstrous shapes. Aged hags huddled together with hanging skin and arms that reached almost to their ankles: men that looked like vultures; hunchbacked, deformed children, some with huge heads, others with diminutive, and bodies utterly lacking proportion or harmony. Manuel wondered whether this mysterious fauna might be some jest of Alex’s; but the sculptor spoke most enthusiastically of his work and explained why his figures did not possess the stupid academic correctness so highly lauded by imbeciles. They were all symbols.

After this exhibition of his works Alex sat down in a chair.

“They don’t let me work,” he exclaimed despondently. “And it grieves me. Not on my own account. Don’t imagine that. But for the sake of art. If Alejo MonzÓn doesn’t triumph, sculpture in Europe will go back a century.”

Manuel could not declare the contrary, so he lay down upon the sofa and went to sleep.

The following day, when Manuel awoke, Roberto was already dressed with finicky care and was at his table, writing.

“Are you up so soon?” asked Manuel, in amazement.

“I’ve got to be up with the dawn,” answered Roberto. “I’m not the kind that waits for things to turn up. The mountain doesn’t come to me, so I go to the mountain. There’s no help for it.”

Manuel did not understand very clearly what Roberto meant with this talk about the mountain; he stretched his limbs and arose from the sofa.

“Get along,” said Roberto. “Go for a coffee and toast.”

Manuel went out and was back in a jiffy. They breakfasted together.

“Do you want anything more?” asked Manuel.

“No, nothing.”

“Don’t you intend to return before night?”

“No.”

“You have so many things to do?”

“Plenty, I assure you. At about this time, after having invariably translated ten pages, I go to the Calle Serrano to give a lesson in English; from there I take the tram and walk to the end of the Calle de MendizÁbal, return to the heart of the town, go into the publishing office and correct the proofs of my translation. I leave at noon, go to my restaurant, eat, take coffee, write my letters to England and at three I’m in Fischer’s Academy. At half past four I go to the Protestant colegio. From six to eight I stroll around, at nine I have supper, at ten I’m in the newspaper office and at midnight in bed.”

“What an awful day’s work! But you must be earning a fortune,” commented Manuel.

“Eighty to ninety duros.”

“And with that income you live here?”

“You have eyes for only the income, not the expenses. Every month I have to send thirty duros to my family, so that my mother and sister can exist. The litigation costs me fifteen to twenty duros per month, and with the rest I manage to get along.”

Manuel contemplated Roberto with profound admiration.

“Why, my boy,” exclaimed Roberto, “there’s no help for it if a fellow is to live. And that’s what you ought to do,—hunt, ask, run around, look high and low. You’ll find something.”

It seemed to Manuel that even were the promise of kingship held out to him, he would be unable to bestir himself so actively, but he kept silence.

He waited for the sculptor to get up and the two exchanged impressions as to life’s difficulties.

“See here. For the present you work for me as a model,” said Alex, “and we’ll manage to find some arrangement that will assure us food.”

“Very well, sir. As you please.”

Alex had credit at the bakery and the grocer’s, and calculated that Manuel’s board would cost him less than a model would ask for services. The two decided to feed upon bread and preserves.

The sculptor was by no means a lazy fellow but he lacked persistence in his work and was not master of his art; he was never able to bring his figures to completion, and noting, as he attacked the details of the modelling, that the defects stood out more prominently than ever, he would leave them unfinished. Then his pride induced in him the belief that the exact modelling of an arm or a leg was an unworthy, decadent labor; in which his friends, who were afflicted with the same impotency of artistic effort, agreed with him.

Manuel troubled himself little with questions of art, but often it occurred to him that the sculptor’s theories, rather than sincere convictions, were screens behind which to conceal his deficiency.

Alejo would make a portrait or a bust, and they would say to him: “It doesn’t look like the subject.” Whereupon he would reply: “That’s a distinctly minor matter.” And in everything he did it was the same.

Manuel grew to like these afternoon reunions in the studio, and he listened attentively to all that Alex’s friends had to say.

Two or three were sculptors, others painters and writers. Not one of them was known. They spent their time scurrying from one theatre to another, and from cafÉ to cafÉ, meeting anywhere at all for the pleasure of berating their friends. Outside of this especial theme in which all blended into a perfect harmony, they discussed other matters with peaceful digressions. There was a continuous debating and planning, affirming today, denying tomorrow; poor Manuel, who possessed no basis for judgment, was thrown off the track completely. He could not make out whether they were speaking in jest or in earnest; every moment he heard them shift opinions and it shocked him to see how the selfsame fellow could defend such contradictory ideas.

At times a veiled allusion, a criticism concerning this one or that, would exasperate the entire conclave in so violent a manner that every word quivered with overtones of rage, and beneath the simplest phrases could be detected the pulse of hatred, envy, and mortifying, aggressive malice.

In addition to these young men, almost all of them with venomously sharp tongues, there used to come to the studio two persons who remained tranquil and indifferent amidst the furor of the discussions. One was already somewhat old, serious, thin; his name was Don Servando Arzubiaga. The other, of the same age as Alex, was called SantÍn. Don Servando, although a man of letters, was devoid of literary vanity, or, if he possessed any, kept it so deep down, so subterraneous, that none could discern it.

He came to the studio for relaxation; with cigarette between his lips he would listen to the varying opinions, smiling at the exaggerations and joining the conversation with some conciliatory word.

Bernardo SantÍn, the younger of the indifferent members, did not open his mouth; it was exceedingly difficult for him to understand how men could battle like that over a purely literary or artistic question.

SantÍn was meagre; his face was evenly formed, his nose thin, his eyes sad, his mustaches blond and his smile insipid. This man spent his life copying paintings in the Museo and making them progressively worse; but ever since he had begun to frequent Alex’s studio he had lost completely the little fondness he had for work.

One of his manias was to talk familiarly to everybody. The third or fourth time he met a person he was already addressing him with the intimate pronoun.

Of course, these gatherings in Alex’s studio were not enough for the bohemians, so that at night they would come together again in the CafÉ de Lisboa. Manuel, without being considered one of them, was tolerated at their meetings, although he was given neither voice nor vote.

And just because he said nothing he paid all the more attention to what he heard.

They were almost all of evil instincts and malicious intent. They felt the necessity of speaking ill one of the other, of insulting one another, of damaging one another’s interests through schemes and treachery, yet at the same time they needed to see one another and exchange talk. They possessed, like woman, the need of complicating life with petty trifles, of living and developing in an atmosphere of gossip and intrigue.

Roberto mingled in their midst, calm and indifferent; he paid no attention to their plans or to their debates.

Manuel seemed to feel that it vexed Roberto to see him so deeply taken up with the bohemian life, and in order to enter into his friend’s good graces, one morning he accompanied Roberto as far as the house where he gave his English lesson. On the way he told him that he had made a number of unsuccessful efforts to find work, and asked what course to pursue further.

“What? I’ve already told you more than once what you have to do,” answered Roberto. “Look, look and keep on looking. Then work your very head off.”

“But suppose I can’t find a place.”

“There’s always a job if you really mean business. But you have to mean it. The first thing you’ve got to learn is to wish with all your might. You may answer that all you want is to vegetate in any old way; but you won’t succeed even in that if you keep hanging around with the loafers who come to this studio. You’ll sink from a mere idler to a shameless tramp.”

“But how about them?...”

“I don’t know whether or not they’ve ever done anything wrong; as you will readily understand, that doesn’t concern me one way or the other. But when a man can’t get a real grasp upon anything, when he lacks will power, heart, lofty sentiments, all ideas of justice and equity, then he’s capable of anything. If these fellows had any exceptional talent, they might be of some use and make a career for themselves. But they haven’t. On the other hand, they’ve lost the moral notions of the bourgeois, the pillars that sustain the life of the ordinary man. They live as men who possess the ailments and the vices of genius, but neither the genius’s talent nor soul; they vegetate in an atmosphere of petty intrigues, of base trivialities. They are incapable of carrying anything to completion. There may be a touch of genius in those monsters of Alex’s, in Santillana’s poetry; I don’t say there isn’t. But that’s not enough. A man must carry out what he’s thought up, what he’s felt, and that takes hard, constant, daily toil. It’s just like an infant at birth, and although that comparison is hackneyed, it is exact; the mother bears it in pain, then feeds it from her own breast and tends it until it grows up sound and strong. These fellows want to create a beautiful work of art at a single stroke and all they do is talk and talk.”

Roberto paused for breath, and continued more gently.

“And at that, they have the advantage of being in touch with things; they know one another, they know the newspaper men, and believe me, my friend, the press today is a brutal power. But no, you can’t get into the newspaper game; you’d require seven or eight years of preparation, hunting up friends and recommendations. And in the meantime, what would you earn a living at?”

“But I don’t want to be one of them. I realize well enough that I’m a common workingman.”

“Workingman! Indeed! I only wish you were. Today you’re nothing more than a loafer who has yet to become a workingman: a fellow like me, like all the rest of us who toil for a living. At present, activity is a genuine effort for you; do something; repeat what you do until activity becomes a habit. Convert your static life into a dynamic one. Don’t you understand? I want to impress upon you the need of will power.”

Manuel stared at Roberto dispiritedly; they each spoke a different language.

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CHAPTER II

SeÑorita Esther Volovitch—A Wedding—Manuel, Photographer’s Apprentice

Despite Roberto’s advice, Manuel continued as he was, neither looking for work nor occupying himself with anything useful; posing for Alex and acting as servant to all the others who forgathered in the studio.

At times, when he remembered Roberto’s advice, he would wax indignant against him.

“I know well enough,” he would say to himself, “that I haven’t his push, and that I’m not able to accomplish the things he can do. But his advice is all nonsense,—at least, as far as I’m concerned. ‘Have will-power,’ he says to me. But suppose I haven’t any? ‘Make it.’ It’s as if I were told to add a palm to my height. Wouldn’t it be better for me to hunt for a job?”

Manuel began to feel a hatred against Roberto. He would avoid meeting him alone; it filled him with rage that, instead of giving him something, anything at all, Roberto would settle the matter with a bit of metaphysical advice impossible of translation into reality.

The bohemians continued their disordered existence, their everlasting projects, until a gap was opened in their midst. SantÍn was missing. One day he did not show up at the cafÉ, the next he did not appear at the studio, and in a few weeks he was nowhere to be seen.

“Where can that fool be?” they asked one another.

Nobody knew.

One night Varela, one of the writers, announced that he had caught sight of Bernardo SantÍn sauntering along Recoletos in company of a blonde girl who looked like an Englishwoman.

“The confounded idiot!” exclaimed one of the group.

“That’s old stuff,” replied another. “Schopenhauer said long ago that it’s fools who are most successful with women.”

“I wonder where he got this Englishwoman.”

“That ingle woman![1] He must have got her out of his groin!” suggested a callow youth, who was learning how to write farces.

“Ugh! These cheap jokes are enough to drive a man to drink!” cried several in chorus.

The talk drifted to other topics. Three days after this conversation SantÍn appeared at the cafÉ. He was welcomed with a noisy demonstration, spoons drumming against saucers. When the ovation had ended, they besieged him with the question:

“Who is that Englishwoman?”

“What Englishwoman?”

“That blond girl you’ve been out sporting with!”

“That’s my sweetheart; but she’s not English. She’s Polish. A girl whose acquaintance I made at the Museo. She gives lessons in French and English.”

“And what’s her name?”

“Esther.”

“A fine article for winter nights,” blurted the fellow who was learning how to write sainetes.

“How do you make that out?” queried Bernardo.

“Easy. ’Cause an estera[2] adds to the comfort of a room.”

“Oh! Oh! Out with him! Throw him out!” rose a general shout.

“Thanks! Many thanks, my dear public,” replied the joker, unabashed.

SantÍn told how he had come to know the Polish girl. They were all more or less filled with envy of Bernardo’s success, and they set about poisoning his triumph, insinuating that this Polish miss might be an adventuress, that perhaps she was in her fifties, and might have had two or three kids by some carbineer.... Bernardo, who saw through their malice, never returned to the cafÉ.

Very early one morning, a couple of weeks after this scene, Manuel was still asleep on the sofa of the studio, and Roberto, according to his habit, was at work upon the translation of the ten pages that constituted his daily stint, when the door of the studio was flung open and in swept Bernardo. Manuel awoke at the sound of his steps, but pretended to be fast asleep.

“What can this fellow have come for?” he asked himself.

Bernardo greeted Roberto and began crossing the studio from one side to the other.

“You’ve come rather early. Anything the matter?” asked Hasting.

“My boy,” muttered SantÍn, coming to a sudden stop, “I’ve got serious news for you.”

“What’s up?”

“I’m getting married.”

“You getting married!”

“Yes.”

“To whom?”

“To whom do you suppose? A woman, of course.”

“I should imagine so. But have you gone mad?”

“Why?”

“How are you going to support your wife?”

“Why.... I earn something at my painting!”

“What can you earn! A mere pittance.”

“That’s what you think.... Besides, my sweetheart gives lessons.”

“And you intend to live off her.... Now I understand.”

“No, no, sir. I haven’t any intention of making her work for me. I’m going to open a photographer’s studio.”

“Photographer’s studio! You! Why, you don’t know the first thing about it!”

“Nothing. I know nothing, according to you. Well, there are stupider asses than me in the picture business. I don’t imagine it takes a genius to be a photographer.”

“No, but it requires a knowledge of photography, and you haven’t the least idea.”

“You’ll see; you’ll see whether I have or not.”

“Besides, it takes money.”

“I have the money.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“A certain party.”

“Lucky boy!”

“You’ll see.”

“I’ll wager you wheedled the money out of your sweetheart.”

“No.”

“Bah! None of your lying.”

“I tell you, no.”

“And I say, yes. Who else would give you the money? Any other person would first have investigated just how much you knew about photography and learned whether you ever worked in a studio; they would require proof of your ability. Only a woman could believe blindly, simply taking a fellow’s word for it.”

“It’s a woman who’s lending me the money, but it isn’t my sweetheart.”

“Come. None of your lies, now. I can’t believe that you’ve come here just to tell me a string of whoppers.”

Roberto, who had interrupted his writing, now resumed it.

Bernardo made no reply and began to pace up and down the room anew.

“Have you much work left?” he asked suddenly, coming to a stop.

“Two pages. If you’ve got anything to say to me, I’m listening.”

“Well, see here, it’s this way. The money really does come from my sweetheart. She offered it to me. ‘What can we do with this?’ she said to me. And it occurred to me to open up a photographer’s studio. I’ve hired a place on a fourth floor, with a very attractive workroom, in the Calle de Luchana, and I have to put the suite and the gallery in order.... And, to tell the truth, I don’t know just how to arrange the gallery, for there are curtains to be put up.... But I don’t know how.”

“That’s rather rare in a photographer,—not to know how to arrange a gallery.”

“I know how to work the camera.”

“Indeed. You know exactly as much as everybody else: aim, press the bulb, and as for the rest ... let somebody else attend to it.”

“No, I know the rest, too.”

“Do you know how to develop a plate?”

“Yes, I imagine I could.”

“How?”

“How?... Why, I’d look it up in a manual.”

“What a photographer! You’re deceiving your sweetheart most shamefully.”

“She wanted it. I may know nothing now, but I’ll learn. What I’d like you to do is write a couple of lines to these German firms that I’ve noted down here, asking for catalogues of cameras and other photographic apparatus. And then I’d like you to step in to my house, for, with all your talent, you can give me an idea of things.”

“You flatter me most indecently.”

“No, it’s the plain truth. You understand these matters. You’ll come, won’t you?”

“Very well. I’ll come some day.”

“Yes, do. Take my word for it, I really want to settle down to business and work, so that my poor father may be able to live a peaceful old age.”

“That’s the way to talk.”

“And there’s another thing. This youngster that you keep here,—does he work for you?”

“Why?”

“Because I could take him into my house and he might learn the profession there.”

“Now that strikes me as pretty sensible, too. Take him along.”

“Will Alex be willing?”

“If the boy is.”

“Will you speak to him?”

“Certainly. This very moment.”

“And can I count on your writing those letters?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. I’ll be off now, for I have to buy some glass panes. Speak to the boy.”

“Leave that to me.”

“Thanks for everything. And you’ll drop in to my house, won’t you? Remember, my future and my father’s depend on it.”

“I’ll come.”

Bernardo pressed the hands of his friend effusively and left. Roberto, when he had finished writing, called: “Manuel.”

“What?”

“You were awake, weren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You heard our conversation?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, if you’re willing, you know what you can do. You have a chance to learn a profession.”

“I’ll go, if you think it best.”

“It’s up to you.”

“Then I’ll go this very moment.”

Without bidding good-bye to Alex, Manuel left the garret and went off to the Calle de Luchana in search of Bernardo SantÍn. The apartment was nominally on the third floor, but counting the mezzanine and the ground floor, it was really on the fifth. In response to Manuel’s knocking an aged man with reddish eyes opened the door; it was Bernardo’s father. Manuel explained the purpose of his coming, and the old man shrugged his shoulders, and returned to the kitchen, where he was cooking. Manuel waited for Bernardo to arrive. The house was still without any furniture; there was only a table and a few pots and pans in the kitchen, and two beds in a large room. Bernardo arrived, and the three had lunch and SantÍn decided that Manuel should ask the janitor for a step-ladder and get busy arranging and inserting the panes of glass in the gallery.

After having given these orders he said that he must be off at once to an appointment, and left.

Manuel spent the first day at the top of a ladder, putting the panes into place with bands of lead and gluing the broken ones together with strips of paper.

Arranging the panes was a matter of much time; then Manuel put up the curtains and papered the gallery with rolls of blue printing paper.

Within a week or thereabouts Roberto appeared with the catalogues. He marked with a pencil the things that they would have to order, and instructed Bernardo in the arrangement of the dark room; he indicated a spot best adapted to the installment of a transom, where the plates would be exposed to the sun and the positives made, and informed him upon a number of other details. Bernardo paid close attention to all Roberto said and then handed over all the duties to Manuel. Bernardo, besides possessing little intelligence, was an inveterate idler. He did absolutely nothing. Only when his sweetheart came to see how matters were progressing would he pretend to be very busy.

His sweetheart was a very winsome creature; she seemed to Manuel even pretty, despite her red hair and her lashes and eyebrows of the same colour. She had a pale little face, somewhat freckled, a pinkish, turned-up nose, clear eyes and lips so red and alluring that they roused a desire to kiss them. She was of diminutive build, but very well formed. She did not trill her r’s, gliding over them, and pronounced her c’s before e and i as s instead of th.

She seemed to be genuinely in love with Bernardo, and this shocked Manuel.

“She can’t really know him,” he thought.

Bernardo, with an unlimited conviction of his own knowledge, explained to the girl all the work he was doing and how he was going to arrange the laboratory. Whatever he had heard from Roberto he spouted forth to his sweetheart with the most unheard-of impudence. The girl found everything sailing along very nicely; doubtless she foresaw a rosy future.

Manuel, who saw through the swindle that Bernardo was perpetrating, wondered whether it would not be an act of charity to inform the blonde miss that her sweetheart was a good-for-nothing mountebank. But, after all, what business was it of his?

Bernardo now led a grand existence; he loitered, he bought jewelry on the instalment plan, he gambled at the FrontÓn Central. All he did in the house was issue contradictory orders and get matters into a hopeless tangle. In the meantime his father cooked away in the kitchen, indifferent to everything, and spent the day pounding in the mortar or mincing meat in the chopping bowl.

Manuel would go to bed so exhausted that he fell asleep at once; but one night, when he had not sunk into slumber so soon he heard Bernardo, from the next room, declare:

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Is he going to kill him?” asked the voice of the red-eyed old man.

“Take your time,” replied the son. “You made me lose my place.”

And he began his reading over again, for that was all it was, until he came once more to the sentence, “I’m going to kill you.” On the following nights Bernardo continued his reading, in terrible tones. This, without a doubt, was his sole occupation.

Bernardo was no more worried about things than was his father; all the rest was utterly indifferent in his eyes; he had wheedled the money out of his sweetheart and was now living on it, squandering it as if it were his own. When the camera and other apparatus arrived from Germany, at first he entertained himself by printing positives from plates that Roberto had developed. Soon, however, he wearied of this and did nothing at all.

He was stupid and base beyond belief; he committed one absurdity after the other. He would open the camera while the plates were being exposed, and confuse the various bottles of fluid. It exasperated Roberto to see how utterly careless the man could be.

In the meantime preparations were proceeding for the wedding. Several times Manuel and Bernardo went to the Rastro and bought photographs of actresses made in Paris by Reutlinger, unglued the picture from the mounting and pasted it upon other mountings that bore the signature Bernardo SantÍn, Photographer, printed along the margin in gilt letters.

The wedding took place in November, at the ChamberÍ church. Roberto did not care to attend, but Bernardo himself went to fetch him and there was nothing to do but take part in the celebration. After the ceremony they went for a spread to a cafÉ on the Glorieta de Bildao.

The guests were: two friends of the groom’s father, one of them a retired soldier; the landlady of the house in which the bride had been living, and her daughter; a cousin of Bernardo’s, his wife, and Manuel.

Roberto engaged in conversation with the bride, who struck him as being very personable and agreeable; she spoke English quite well, and they exchanged a few words in that tongue.

“Too bad she’s marrying such a dolt,” thought Roberto.

At the banquet one of the old men began to tell a number of smutty tales that brought blushes to the bride’s cheek. Bernardo, who had drunk too freely, jested with his cousin’s wife with that coarseness and gracelessness which characterized him.

The return from the ceremony to the house in the evening, was gloomy. Bernardo was in high feather and tried to play the elegant gentleman. Esther spoke to Roberto about her departed mother, and the solitude in which she dwelt.

On reaching the entrance to the house, the guests took leave of the couple. As Roberto was about to go, Bernardo came up to him and, in a lifeless, scarcely audible voice, confessed that he was afraid to remain alone with his wife.

“Man, don’t be an idiot. What did you get married for, then?”

“I didn’t know what I was doing. Come, stay with me a moment.”

“What! A pleasant joke on your wife that would be!”

“Yes, she’s fond of you.”

Roberto scrutinized his friend, avoiding his eyes, because he had no relish for jests.

“Yes, do stay with me. There’s something else, too.”

“Well, what is it?”

“I don’t know a thing yet about photography, and I’d like you to come for a week or two. I beg it as a special favour.”

“It’s impossible. I have my lessons to give.”

“Come, if only during the lunch hour. You’ll eat with us.”

“Very well.”

“And now, come up for a moment, do.”

“No, not now.” Roberto turned and left.

During the succeeding days Roberto visited the newly married couple, and chatted with them during the meal.

On the third day, between Bernardo and Manuel, they managed to photograph two servant girls who appeared at the studio. Roberto developed the plates, which, as luck would have it, came out well, and he continued visiting his friend’s home.

Bernardo resumed the life of his bachelor days, devoting himself to loafing and amusement. After a few days he failed to show up for lunch. He was absolutely without a glimmer of moral sentiment; he had noticed that his wife and Roberto had a liking for one another, and he imagined that Roberto, in order to be near the place and make love to his wife, would do the work in his stead. Provided that his father and he lived well, the rest did not matter to him.

When Roberto realized the scheme, he grew indignant.

“See here, listen to me,” he said. “Do you imagine I’m going to work here for you while you go idling around? Not a bit of it, my dear fellow!”

“I’m no good for working with these nasty chemicals,” replied Bernardo, sullenly. “I’m an artist.”

“What you are is a good-for-nothing imbecile.”

“Excellent. All the better.”

“You’re utterly worthless. You married this girl just to get the little money she had. It’s disgusting.”

“I know well enough you’ll take my wife’s part.”

“I’m not taking her part. The poor thing was idiotic enough herself to have married the like of you.”

“Do you mean, then, that you don’t care to come here and do the work?”

“I certainly do not.”

“Well, it’s all the same to me. I’ve found a business partner. So you may as well know. I don’t beg anybody to come to my house.”

“All right. Good-bye.”

Roberto stopped coming. In a few days the partner presented himself and Bernardo discharged Manuel.

---

CHAPTER III

The “Europea” and the “Benefactora”—A Strange Employment

Manuel returned to Alex’s studio. That worthy, displeased with the boy because he had left the place without so much as saying good-bye, refused to allow him to stay there again.

The bohemians who forgathered at the studio asked how Bernardo was getting along, and uttered a string of humorous commentaries upon the lot that Fate held in store for the photographer.

“So Roberto developed his plates?” asked one.

“Yes.”

“He retouched his plates and his wife,” added another.

“What a shameless wretch that Bernardo is!”

“Not at all. He’s a philosopher of Candide’s school. Be a cuckold and cultivate your garden. There lies true happiness.”

“And what are you going to do now?” asked Alex sarcastically of Manuel.

“I don’t know. I’ll look for employment.”

“See here, do you fellows know a man by the name of SeÑor Don Bonifacio Mingote, who lives on the third floor of this house?” asked Don Servando Arzubiaga, the thin, indifferent gentleman.

“No.”

“He’s an employment agent. He can’t have very good jobs on his list, or he’d have got himself one. I know him through the newspaper; he was formerly the representative for certain mineral waters and used to bring advertisements. He was telling me the other day that he needed a young fellow.”

“Better go see him,” advised Alex.

“You don’t aspire to be a grandee of Spain, do you?” asked Don Servando of Manuel, with a smile blended of irony and kindliness.

“No, nor you, either,” retorted Manuel, ill-humouredly.

Don Servando burst into laughter.

“If you’re willing, we’ll see this Mingote. Shall we go this very moment?”

“Come along, if you wish.”

They went down to the third floor, knocked at a door, and were bidden into a narrow dining-room. They asked for the agent and a slovenly servant-girl pointed to a door. Don Servando rapped with his knuckles, and in response to a “Come in!” from some one inside, they both entered the room.

A corpulent man with thick, dyed moustaches, wrapped in a woman’s cloak, was pacing up and down, declaiming and gesticulating with a cane in his right hand. He stopped, and opening wide his arms, in theatrical tones exclaimed: “Ah, my dear SeÑor Don Servando! Welcome, welcome!” Then he gazed at the ceiling, and in the same affected manner, added: “What brings to this poor habitation at such an early hour the illustrious writer, the inveterate night-owl?”

Don Servando related to the corpulent gentleman, who was none other than Don Bonifacio Mingote himself, the reasons for his visit.

In the meantime an ugly creature, filthy and sickly, with arms like a doll’s and the head of a Chinaman, stuck his pen behind his ear and began to rub his palms with an air of satisfaction.

The room was ill-smelling, cluttered with torn posters, large and small, which were pasted to the wall; in a corner stood a narrow bed, in disarray; there were three disembowelled chairs with the horse-hair stuffing exposed; in the middle, a brazier protected by a wire-netting, on which two dirty socks were drying.

“For the present I can promise nothing,” said the employment agent to Don Servando, after hearing his story. “Tomorrow I can tell better; but I have something good under way.”

“You understand what this gentleman is saying,” said Don Servando to Manuel. “Come here tomorrow.”

“Can you write?” SeÑor Mingote asked the boy.

“Yes, sir.”

“With correct spelling?”

“There may be some words that I don’t know....”

“Oh, it’s the same with me. We really great men despise those truly petty matters. Sit down here and get to work.” He placed a chair at the other side of the table where the yellow man was writing. “This work,” he added, “will serve as payment for the favour I’m going to do you,—finding you a first-class situation.”

“SeÑor Mingote,” exclaimed Don Servando, “my infinite thanks for everything.”

“SeÑor Don Servando! Always at your service!” replied the business and employment agent, refocussing one of his cross eyes and making a solemn bow.

Manuel sat down before the table, took the pen, dipped it into the ink-well and waited for further orders.

“Write one of these names on each circular,” instructed Mingote, handing him a list of names and a package of circulars. The agent’s handwriting was bad, defective,—that of a man who scarcely knows how to write. The circular was headed as follows:

In it were offered to the various social classes all manner of articles, opportunities and positions.

One might purchase at bottom prices medicinal remedies, meats, oilskins, fruits, shell fish, funeral wreaths, false teeth, ladies’ hats; sputum and urine were analyzed; the agency hunted up guaranteed governesses; it procured notes from the courses in Law, Medicine and special professions; it offered capital, loans, mortgages; it arranged for sensational, monstrous advertisements. And all these services, plus a multitude of others, were supplied at a minimum fee so tiny as to appear ridiculous.

Manuel set to work copying the names in his best hand on to the circulars and the envelopes.

SeÑor Mingote inspected Manuel’s handwriting, and after congratulating him, wrapped himself up in his cloak, took two or three strides about the room and asked his secretary:

“Where were we?”

“We were saying,” replied the amanuensis with sinister gravity, “that the Estrellado FernÁndez brand of Anis is salvation.”

“Ah, yes; I remember.”

And all at once SeÑor Mingote began to shout, in a thunderous voice:

“What is Estrellado FernÁndez Anis? It is salvation, it is life, it is energy, it is power.”

Manuel raised his eyes in astonishment, and beheld the agent’s distracted gaze fixed upon the ceiling; he was gesticulating wildly, as if threatening some one with his right hand which was armed with the cane, while his secretary scribbled rapidly over the sheet.

“It is a fact, universally recognized by Science,” continued Mingote in his melodramatic tones, “that neurasthenia, asthenia, impotency, hysteria and many other disorders of the nervous system.... What other ailments does it cure?” Mingote paused to ask, in his natural voice.

“Rickets, scrofula, chorea....”

“ ... That rickets, scrofula, chorea and many other disorders of the nervous system....”

“Pardon,” interrupted the amanuensis. “I believe that rickets is not a disorder of the nervous system.”

“Very well. Scratch it out. Let’s see; we were at the nervous system, weren’t we?”

“Yes, sir.”

“ ... And other disorders of the nervous system come solely and exclusively from atony,—exhaustion of the nerve-cells. Well, then,—” and Mingote increased the volume of his voice with a new fervour,—“Estrellado FernÁndez Anis corrects this atony; Estrellado FernÁndez Anis, exciting the secretion of the gastric juices, routs these ailments which age and destroy mankind.”

After this paragraph, delivered with the greatest enthusiasm and oratorical fire, Mingote brushed his trousers with his cane and muttered, in his natural voice.

“You mark my word. That SeÑor FernÁndez won’t pay. And if only the anisette were good! Haven’t they sent some more bottles from the pharmacy?”

“Yes, yesterday they sent two.”

“And where are they?”

“I took them home.”

“Eh?”

“Yes. They promised them to me. And since you made off with the whole first consignment, I took the liberty of carrying these home with me.”

“Lord in heaven! Excellent! First rate!... Have folks send you some bottles of magnificent anisette so that some other fellow with long fingers may come along and.... Good God above!” And Mingote paused to stare at the ceiling with one of his cross eyes.

“Haven’t you any left?” asked his secretary.

“Yes, but they’ll run out at any moment.”

Then he began another eloquent paragraph, pacing up and down the room, brandishing his cane, and frequently interrupting his discourse to utter some violent apostrophe or humorous reflection.

At noon the amanuensis arose, clapped his hat down upon his head, and went off without a word or a salute.

Mingote placed his hand upon Manuel’s shoulder and said to him, in fatherly fashion:

“Well, you can go home now to eat, and be back at about two.”

Manuel climbed up to the studio; neither Roberto nor Alejo was there; nor was a crumb to be found in the entire establishment. He rummaged through all the corners, returning by half-past one, to Don Bonifacio’s where, between one yawn and another, he continued to address the circulars.

Mingote was highly pleased with Manuel’s proficiency, and either because of this, or because at his meal he had devoted himself excessively to Estrellado FernÁndez’ Anis, he surrendered himself to the most incoherent and picturesque verbosity, his gaze as ever fixed upon the ceiling. Manuel laughed loud guffaws at Don Bonifacio’s comical, extravagant witticisms.

“You’re not like my secretary,” said the agent to him, flattered by the boy’s manifestations of pleasure. “He doesn’t crack a smile at my jokes, but then he steals them from me and repeats them, all garbled, in those cheap little funereal pieces he writes. And that’s not the worst. Read this.” And Mingote handed Manuel a printed announcement.

This, too, was a circular in Don Bonifacio’s style. It read:

“Eh?” cried Mingote when Manuel had finished reading. “What do you think of that? Here he is making his living in La Europa, and then he goes and plagiarizes me and runs La Benefactora. That man is the same way in everything. As treacherous as the waves. But ah, SeÑor Don Pelayo, I’ll get even with you yet. If you’re a perfidious bat, I’ll nail you to my door; if you’re a miserable tortoise, I’ll smash your shell for you. Do you see, my son? What can you expect of a country where they don’t respect intellectual property, which is not only the most sacred, but the only legitimate form of all property?”

Mingote did not point out to Manuel a note that was printed on the margin of his circular. This was one of Don Pelayo’s ideas. In it the Agency offered itself for certain intimate investigations and services. This note, very tactfully drawn up, was addressed to those who wished to form the acquaintance of an agreeable woman so as to complete their education; to those who were eager to consummate a good match; to those who harboured doubts as to their other half; and to others, to whom the Agency offered probing and confidential investigations, at a low price, and vigilance by day and by night, accomplishing all these assignments with the utmost delicacy.

Mingote did not like to confess that this idea had escaped him.

“Do you understand? It’s impossible to live,” he concluded. “Folks are nothing but beasts. I see, however, that you make distinctions, and I’ll take you under my wing.”

And, indeed, through Mingote’s protection, Manuel was able to eat that night.

“Tomorrow, when you arrive,” instructed Bonifacio, “you’ll take a package of these circulars and go around distributing them from house to house, without missing a single one. I don’t want you to slip them in under the doors, either. At every house you are to knock and ask. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In the meantime, I’ll be looking after your position.”

On the following day Manuel distributed a package of circulars and returned at meal time with his task accomplished.

He was getting tired of waiting when Mingote appeared in his room; he stopped in front of Manuel, swept his cane rapidly through the air, struck the boy’s arms, stood still, recoiled, and shouted:

“Ah! Rogue! Bandit! Mountebank!”

“What’s the trouble?” asked Manuel in fright.

“The trouble? You knave! The trouble? Wretch, you! You’re the luckiest fellow on two feet; your future is assured; you’ve landed a job.”

“As what?”

“As a son.”

“As a son? I don’t understand.”

Mingote planted himself squarely, gazed at the ceiling, saluted with his cane as a fencing-master would with his foil, and added:

“You’re going to pass for the son of nothing less than a baroness!”

“Who? I?”

“Yes. You’ve no cause for complaint, you rogue! You rise out of the gutter to the heights of aristocracy. You may even manage to acquire a title.”

“But is all this true?”

“As true as I’m the most talented man in all Europe. So get a move on, my future Baron; spruce up, scratch off your dirt, brush your hair, scrape the mud off those filthy sandals of yours, and accompany me to the home of the baroness.”

Manuel was dumfounded; he could not understand what it was all about. But he knew that the agent would not have taken the trouble to run all over town simply for the pleasure of perpetrating a joke upon him.

At once he made ready to accompany Mingote. Together they entered the Calle Ancha de San Bernardo, strode down Los Reyes to the Calle Princesa, and continued along this street until they paused before a wide entrance, into which they disappeared.

They passed into a corridor that led to a wide patio.

A series of galleries with symmetrical rows of chocolate-hued doors surrounded the patio.

Mingote knocked at one of the doors of the gallery on the second floor.

“Who is it?” asked a woman’s voice from within.

“It’s me,” replied Mingote.

“I’m coming. I’m coming.”

The door was opened and there appeared a mulattress in battered shoes, followed by three poodle dogs, who barked furiously.

“Hush, LÉon! Hush Morito!” cried the servant in a very languid tone. “Come in. Come in.”

Manuel and Mingote walked into a stifling room, which had a window that looked upon the patio. The walls of the room, from a certain height, were almost covered with women’s clothes that formed a sort of wainscoting all around it. From the shutter-bolt of the window was suspended a low cut sleeveless chemise with lace edging and bows of faded blue, which displayed cynically a dark blood-stain.

“Wait a moment. The lady is dressing,” requested the mulattress.

Within a short while she reappeared and asked them to step into the study.

The baroness, a blonde woman attired in a bright gown, was reclining upon a sofa in an attitude of intense languor and desolation.

“Here again, Mingote?”

“Yes, madame. Again.”

“Have a seat, gentlemen.”

The place was a cramped, ill-lighted room crowded with far more furniture than it could easily accommodate. Within a short space were heaped together an old console with a mantle-clock upon it; several crumpled armchairs, upon which the silk, once upon a time red, had turned violet through the action of the sun; two large oil portraits, and a bevelled mirror with a cracked surface.

“I bring to you, dear Baroness,” said Mingote, “the youngster of whom we have spoken.”

“Is this the one?”

“Yes.”

“It seems to me I know this boy.”

“Yes. And I know you, too,” spoke up Manuel. “I was in a boarding-house on the Calle de Mesonero Romanos; the landlady’s name was DoÑa Casiana; my mother was the maid-of-all-work there.”

“Indeed. That’s so. And your mother,—how is she getting along?” asked the baroness of Manuel.

“She’s dead.”

“He’s an orphan,” interjected Mingote. “As free as the forest bird,—free to sing and to die of hunger. It was in just such circumstances that I myself arrived in Madrid some time back, and queerly, strangely enough, strangely indeed, I’d like to go back to those good old days.”

“And how old are you?” asked the baroness of the boy, unheedful of the agent’s reflections.

“Eighteen.”

“But see here, Mingote,” exclaimed the baroness, “this youngster is not the age you said he was.”

“That doesn’t matter at all. Nobody would say that he was a day over fourteen or fifteen. Hunger does not permit the products of nature to grow. If you cease watering a tree, or cease feeding a human being....”

“Tell me,”—and the baroness interrupted Mingote impatiently as she lowered her voice, “have you told him what he’s wanted for?”

“Yes; he would have guessed it at once, anyway. You can’t fool a kid like this, who’s knocked about the town, as if he were a respectable child. Poverty is a great teacher, Baroness.”

“And you tell that to me?” replied the lady. “When I think of the life I’ve led and am leading now, my hair stands on end. Without a doubt the good Lord endowed me with a privileged nature, for I accustom myself quite easily to everything.”

“You can always lead an easy life if you wish,” answered Mingote. “Oh! If I had only been born a woman! What a career I’d have led!”

“Let’s not talk of that.”

“You’re right. What’s the use? Now we’ll plan our new stratagem. I’ll get to work preparing the proofs of the boy’s civil status. And do you wish to take charge of him?”

“Very well.”

“He can run your errands for you. He’s a pretty good hand at writing.”

“Never mind. Let him remain here.”

“Then, my dear Baroness, good-bye until one of these days when I’ll bring you the documents. Dear lady ... at your feet.”

“Ay, how ceremonious! Good-bye, Mingote! See him out, Manuel.”

The two men walked to the door together. There the agent placed his hands upon the youth’s shoulders.

“Good-bye, my lad,” he said. “And don’t forget, if ever you should become a baron in real earnest, that you owe it all to me.”

“I’ll not forget. You needn’t worry on that score,” answered Manuel.

“You’ll always remember your protector?”

“Always.”

“My son, preserve that filial piety. For a protector such as I is almost like a father. He is ... I was about to say, the arm of Providence. I feel deeply moved.... I am no longer young. Have you, by any chance, a few coins in your pocket?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad,” and Mingote, after a sweep with his cane, left the house.

Manuel closed the door and returned to the room on tip-toe.

“Chucha! Chucha!” called the baroness. And when the mulattress appeared who had opened the door to Mingote and Manuel, the baroness said to her:

“See. This is the boy.”

“Jesu! Jesu!” shrieked the servant. “He’s a ragamuffin! Whatever put it into madame’s head to bring such a tramp into the house?”

Before such an outburst as this, although it was spoken in the most mellifluous and languid of tones, Manuel stood paralyzed.

“You’ve terrified the lad,” exclaimed the baroness, bursting into loud laughter.

“But Your Grace must be mad,” muttered the servant.

“Hush! Hush! Not so much noise. Get some soap and water ready for him and have him wash up.”

The mulattress left, and the baroness scrutinized Manuel closely.

“So the man told you what you’ve come here for?”

“Yes, he told me something.”

“And are you willing?”

“Yes, I am, SeÑora.”

“Good. You’re a philosopher. I’m quite satisfied. And what have you done up to now?”

Manuel recounted his adventures, drawing a little upon his imagination, and entertained the baroness for a while.

“Fine. Don’t say a word to anybody, understand?... And now go and wash yourself.”

CHAPTER IV

The Baroness de Aynant, Her Dogs and Her Mulattress Companion—Wherein is Prepared a Farce

Little work, little to eat and clean clothes: these were the conditions that Manuel found in the home of the baroness, and they were unsurpassable.

In the morning his duty was to take the baroness’s dogs out for a stroll; in the afternoon he had to run a few errands. At times, during the first days, he felt homesick for his wandering existence. Several issues of huge novels published in serial form, which Chucha lent him, allayed his passion for tramping about the streets and transported him, in company of FernÁndez y GonzÁlez and TÁrrago y Mateos, to the life of the XVIIth century, with its braggart knights and its lovelorn ladies.

NiÑa Chucha, an eternal chatterbox, recounted to Manuel, in several instalments, the tale of her dear friend, as she called the baroness.

The Baroness de Aynant, Paquita Figueroa, was a queer woman. Her father, a wealthy Cuban gentleman, sent her at the age of eighteen, accompanied by an aunt, on a trip to Europe. On the steamer a young Flemish gentleman, fair and blond, as elegant as a Van Dyck portrait, had paid her much attention; the girl had responded with all the ardent enthusiasm of the tropics, and within a month after their arrival in Spain, the Cuban miss was named the Baroness de Aynant, and left with her husband to take up their residence in Antwerp.

The honeymoon waned, and both the Flemish gentleman and the Cuban wife, once they had settled down again to a tranquil existence, agreed that they were not a congenial, well-matched couple. He was devoted to the simple, methodical life, to the music of Beethoven and to meals prepared with cows’ butter; she, on the other hand, was fond of a wild time, of gadding about the fashionable promenades; she loved a dry, hot climate, the music of Chueca, light meals and dishes made with oil.

These divergencies of taste in small matters, piling up, thickening, in time clouded completely the love of the baron and his wife. She could not let pass calmly the cold, tranquilly ironic remarks that her husband made concerning the sweet-potatoes, the oil and the accent of the southern peoples. The baron, in turn, was piqued to hear his wife speak scornfully of the greasy women who devote themselves to cramming down butter. The rivalry between oil and butter, embroiling itself, interweaving itself with their other affairs of greater importance, assumed such proportions that the couple reached the point of excitement and hatred leading to a separation. The baron remained in Antwerp dedicating himself to his artistic predilections and to his buttered toast, while the baroness came to Madrid, where she could give free rein to her fondness for fruit and oily food.

In Madrid the baroness committed a thousand follies. She tried to procure a divorce, that she might marry a ruined aristocrat. But when her bill of divorcement was all prepared for filing, she learned that her husband was seriously ill, and no sooner did she get the news than she left Madrid, hurried to Antwerp, nursed the baron, saved his life, fell in love all over again and presented him with a baby girl.

During this second epoch of their love the couple threw a dense veil over the great question that had formerly divided them. The baroness and the baron made mutual concessions, and the baroness was well on the way to becoming an excellent Flemish dame when she was left a widow.

She returned to Madrid with her daughter, and soon her Levantine instincts reawakened. Her brother-in-law, uncle and guardian of the child, helped her out with a monthly stipend, but this was not enough. A friend of her father’s,—a certain Don Sergio Redondo, a very wealthy merchant,—offered her his hand; but the baroness did not accept, and preferred his patronage to being his wife. Soon she deceived him with another, and for twelve years she continued this duplicity.

In the midst of this squandering, this madness and surrender to caprice, the baroness preserved a moral background, and withdrew her daughter completely from the world in which the mother dwelt. She placed her child in a convent school and every month, the first money that she laid hands upon was used to pay for the girl’s tuition. When she had completed her education, the baroness intended to take her off to Antwerp and live there with her, resigning herself to the career of a respectable woman.

NiÑa Chucha would grumble and protest at her good friend’s whims, but she always ended by obeying them.

Manuel found the house a paradise; he had nothing to do and would spend his idle hours smoking, if there were anything to smoke, or walking along the Moncloa, accompanied by the baroness’s three dogs.

In the meantime Mingote was hard at work. His plan was to exploit Don Sergio Redondo, friend of the baroness’s father and former protector of the lady. The latter, with the instincts of an intriguing, deceitful wench, had informed her former protector that their relations had produced a boy; then she had told him that the boy had died, and afterward, that the boy was still alive.

All these affirmations and denials the lady accompanied with a request for money, to which Don Sergio acceded; until the victim, rendered suspicious, notified the baroness that he did not believe in the existence of that son. The baroness upbraided him as a miserable wretch and Don Sergio answered, pretending not to understand, and keeping a tight lock on his money-chest.

How had Mingote discovered these facts? Undoubtedly it had not been the baroness who told him, but he ferreted them out none the less. And as his imagination was fertile, it occurred to him to propose to the baroness that she hunt up some boy, provide him with false documents and pass him off as Don Sergio’s son.

The baroness, who knew nothing whatever about the law and considered the Penal Code a net spread to catch vagabonds, seized upon the suggestion as a most excellent and fruitful plan. Mingote demanded a share in the profits and the baroness promised him all he should desire. From that moment Mingote set about searching for a youngster who would fulfill the conditions necessary to the deception of Don Sergio, and when he came upon Manuel, he brought him at once to the home of the baroness.

After he had been there a week, Manuel was already provided with the papers that identified him as Sergio Figueroa. Between Mingote, Don Pelayo the amanuensis, and a friend of theirs called PeÑalar, they forged them with most exquisite skill.

“And now what shall we do?” asked the baroness.

Mingote stood wrapped in thought. If the baroness were to write to Don Sergio, that old fellow, in all probability, since he was now suspicious, might take the whole matter sceptically. They must, therefore, discover some indirect procedure,—they must let him get the news from a third party.

“Suppose it were to be from a confessor? What do you think of that?” asked Mingote.

“A confessor?”

“Yes. A priest who would present himself in Don Sergio’s home and inform him that, under the seal of confession, you had told him....”

“No, no,” interrupted the baroness. “And where is this priest?”

“PeÑalar will go, in disguise.”

“No. Besides, Don Sergio knows that I’m not very religious.”

“Then perhaps a schoolmaster would be better.”

“But do you imagine that he’s going to believe I confess to a schoolmaster?”

“No. We’ll have to alter the plan. The master will go to see Don Sergio and tell him that he has a boy in his school, a young prodigy, who is sadly neglected by his mother. One day he asks the prodigy: ‘What’s your father’s and mother’s name, my boy?’ And the boy replies: ‘I haven’t any father or mother; my step-mother is the Baroness de Aynant.’ Then he, the teacher, comes to see you and you tell him that you’re badly off and that you can’t pay the child’s tuition fee, and that his father, a wealthy gentleman, does not even care to know him. The evangelical master asks you several times for the name of this inhuman parent; you refuse to divulge it; but at last he wrests from your lips the name of that cruel creature. The sublime pedagogue then says: ‘I cannot permit the abandonment of this child, of this extraordinary child,’ and he determines to go to see the father of the child.... Well, what do you think of that?”

“Not a badly woven plot. But who’s going to play the schoolmaster? You?”

“No, PeÑalar. He was simply made for the part. He was a tutor in a college; you’ll see. This very day I’ll hunt him up and bring him here. In the meantime, you prepare Manuel. Let him look somewhat like a schoolboy. While I’m out looking for PeÑalar, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to teach him a little,—the first questions and answers of the catechism, for example.”

In accordance with Mingote’s instructions, the baroness ordered Manuel to comb his hair and spruce up; then she fished out for him a sailor suit with a large white collar. Yet however much they might adorn him and ply their arts upon his person, it was impossible to make him look like a respectable youngster; his indifferent, roguish eyes and his smile, which was half bitter and half sarcastic, betrayed the ragamuffin.

At two o’clock Mingote was back at the baroness’s home, with a dark man of clerical aspect. The man, named PeÑalar, spoke with great emphasis; then, when Mingote stated his proposition, PeÑalar, abandoning his emphatic tone, discussed the conditions of payment and the percentage due him.

He hesitated about accepting the commission, in order to see whether he could get more favourable terms, but, finding Mingote unyielding, he accepted.

“Let the boy come along with me this very minute.”

PeÑalar brushed the sleeves of his black frock coat, combed his hair back, and taking Manuel by the hand, said to him in a truly evangelical voice:

“Come, my child.”

Don Sergio Redondo had a flour shop on the Plaza del Progreso.

They reached the square and walked into the shop.

“Don Sergio Redondo?” asked PeÑalar of an old man in a flat, woolen cap.

“He hasn’t come down to the office yet.”

“I’ll wait. Tell him that there’s a gentleman here who would like to see him.”

“Very well. And who shall I say is waiting for him?”

“No, he doesn’t know me. Just tell him that it’s a family matter. Sit down, my boy,” added PeÑalar, turning to Manuel, with a voice and a smile of purely evangelical unction.

Manuel took a seat, and PeÑalar let his gaze wander about the shop with the calmness and ease of one who is fully confident and aware of just what he is about.

The old man in the woolen cap soon reappeared.

“Step into the office,” and he pushed back a black screen set with striped panes. “The master will be in presently.”

PeÑalar and Manuel entered a room lighted by a grated window, and sat down upon a green sofa. Opposite them rose a mahogany closet lined with business books; in the middle stood a writing desk with many drawers, and to one side of this, a safe with gilt knobs.

The room exhaled the spirit of an implacable merchant. One readily saw that this cage held an ugly bird. Manuel was terrified. PeÑalar himself, perhaps, experienced a moment of weakness, but he swelled up with importance, twirled his moustaches, carefully adjusted his spectacles upon his nose and smiled.

Don Sergio did not keep them waiting long. He was a tall old fellow, with white moustaches, and a suspicious glance which he shot obliquely over the rim of his glasses. He wore a long frock coat, bright-coloured trousers, a skull cap of green velvet with a long tassel that hung down one side. He strode in without a greeting, and eyed the man and the boy with evident displeasure. They arose. Perhaps he even thought that he had divined the reason of the Visit, for in a dry, authoritarian voice, and without bidding them be seated, he asked PeÑalar:

“What do you wish, sir? Was it you who had something to say to me with reference to a family matter? You?”

Any other person would have been seized with a desire to strangle the old man. Not PeÑalar, however; difficult situations were his forte, and most to his taste. He began to speak, unabashed by the inquisitorial glances of the merchant.

Manuel listened to him with a mingling of admiration and terror. He could see that the old man was growing angrier every second. PeÑalar spoke on unperturbed.

He was a poor captive soul, a sentimentalist, an idealist—ah!—devoted to the instruction of youth,—that youth in whose bosom repose the seeds of the nation’s regeneration. He had suffered a great deal,—a great deal. He had been in the hospital. A man such as he, who knew French, English, German, who played the piano,—a man of his stamp, related to the entire aristocracy of the kingdom of LeÓn, a man who knew more theology and theodocy than all the priests rolled into one.

Ah! He did not say all this out of vainglory; but he had a right to life. GÓmez SÁnchez, the illustrious histologist, had once said to him:

“You ought not to work.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“Then beg.”

Wherefore sometimes he did beg.

Don Sergio, utterly astounded before this avalanche of words, made no attempt to interrupt PeÑalar. The latter paused, smiled unctuously, noted that the force of habit had carried him on to his everlasting theme of the reason for his sponging on folks, and realizing that his eloquence was leading him astray, lowered his voice, continuing in a confidential tone:

“This our life is, despite all its drawbacks, so attractive,—is it not so, Don Sergio?—that one cannot leave it with indifference. And yet I believe that death is liberation. Yes, I believe in the immortality of the soul, in the absolute dominion of spirit over matter. Not so in previous years. No, I must confess,” and he smiled more benignly than ever, “I was formerly a pantheist, and I still preserve, from that period, perhaps, an enthusiasm for nature. Ah, the country! The country is my delight! Many a time I recall those verses of the Mantuan:

“Are you fond of the country, Don Sergio? You really should be, with all the gifts you possess.”

Don Sergio’s anger, which had been rising together with PeÑalar’s incoherent verbosity, exploded into one curt sentence:

“I abominate the country.”

PeÑalar stopped short with mouth agape.

“Sir, my dear sir,” added the merchant, raising his furious voice, “if you have plenty of time to waste, I haven’t.”

“I haven’t yet told you the reason for my visit,” said PeÑalar, removing his glasses and preparing to wipe them with his handkerchief.

“No, and it isn’t necessary. I can imagine it very well. I give no charity.”

“My worthy SeÑor Don Sergio,” and PeÑalar arose, spectacles in hand, turning his short-sighted glances about the room, “you have made a grievous mistake. I have not come to ask alms nor is that a habit of mine. No one may contradict that statement. I have come,” and he placed his glasses resolutely in their position, “to fulfil a sacred duty.”

“Let’s be done with this. What sacred duty are you talking about? To the point! Enough of the farce. I hate charlatanry.”

“Allow me to have a seat. I am weary,” murmured PeÑalar in a frail voice. “Is any one within hearing?”

Don Sergio glared at him like a hyena. PeÑalar passed his riddled handkerchief across his broad forehead; then, turning to Manuel, who was still regarding the scene in complete amazement, he said to him:

“Please, my dear child, leave us alone for a moment and wait for me outside.”

Manuel opened the office door and walked out into the shop. This manoeuvre caused Don Sergio to start back in bewilderment.

“I, my worthy sir,” said PeÑalar, as soon as he found himself alone with the merchant, “am dedicated to the education of youth.”

“You’re a schoolmaster? So I’ve already heard.”

“I was acting as examiner in the Colegio del EspÍritu Santo, when it occurred to me to go into business on my own account.”

“And you lost money. Very well. But how does all this concern me?” shrilled Don Sergio, pounding upon the table with a book.

“I crave your pardon. Among my pupils I have this boy who has just left us. He is a prodigy, a youngster of extraordinary talents. When I saw how bright he was, how determined, I conceived an interest in him; I inquired about his family, and was told that he had neither father nor mother, and had been taken into a certain lady’s home.”

“Well, what has all this got to do with me?”

“Patience, Don Sergio. I went to see this kind lady, who is a baroness, and I said to her, ‘The boy whom you have taken into your home is worthy of the utmost encouragement. Something should be done for his education.’

“‘His mother has no means and his father, who is very wealthy, does nothing for him,’ was the baroness’s reply.

“‘Tell me who his father is, and I’ll go to see him,’ I said.

“‘It’s no use,’ she answered, ‘for you’ll get nothing out of him. His name is Don Sergio Redondo.’”

As he pronounced these words, PeÑalar got up, and with his head thrown back contemplated Don Sergio, even as the exterminating angel glances upon a poor reprobate. Don Sergio turned frightfully pale, pulled out his handkerchief, rubbed his lips, hawked. It was easily to be seen that he was perturbed.

PeÑalar scrutinized the old man keenly, and noting that his arrogance was abating, became more evangelical and moral than ever.

“The baroness,” he added, “said to me,—and you must pardon my undeviating sincerity—she said to me that you were an egotist and a heartless creature. But despite this,” and he smiled sweetly, feeling himself by now quite supermoral and superevangelic, “I thought: My duty is to go to see that gentleman. That is why I have come. Now you will do as your conscience dictates. I have followed the dictates of mine.”

After this little speech PeÑalar had nothing more to add, and with the smile of the entire martyrology upon his lips he took his hat, saluted most ceremoniously and drew near to the door.

“And that youngster is the boy who was here?” asked Don Sergio in a low, hesitant voice.

“That is he.”

“And where does this woman live,—this baroness?” exclaimed the merchant.

“I cannot tell you. I shall ask her first. If she authorizes me to tell, I will return with the answer.”

And PeÑalar left the office.

“Come along, my boy,” he said to Manuel.

And with proud, noble demeanour, head erect, he left the place, leading his beloved pupil by the hand,—that portentous child so little appreciated by his parents.

CHAPTER V

The Life and Miracles of SeÑor de Mingote—Wherein Beginneth the Succulent Exploitation of Don Sergio

According to the best historians of Madrid the acquaintance of the Baroness de Aynant with Bonifacio de Mingote dated back some two years.

During one of the numerous periods in which the baroness had found herself financially embarrassed she had resorted to a usurer on the Calle del Pez. Instead of the moneylender there appeared his clerk, Mingote himself, who arranged the matter between the two of them. Ever since that time Mingote was a regular visitor at the baroness’s. Who was Don Bonifacio? What was Don Bonifacio?

There are bimanous creatures who rouse a most extraordinary curiosity. In the natural history of man they resemble those species of monotremes situated between the birds and the mammals,—the wonder of zoÖlogists. It is to this class of interesting bimanal animals that Mingote belonged.

This Mingote was about fifty, short, stout, with dyed moustaches, fleshy face, red, tiny nose, cynical mouth and the general appearance of a police agent or a busybody broker. He dressed ostentatiously, and delighted in wearing a thick chain in his waistcoat and false diamonds, as big as chick-peas, on his shirt-front and his fingers.

Mingote had exercised every office that a person may engage in outside the boundaries of decency: he had been a usurer, a member of the police, leader of a claque, exchange broker, rural home agent, court officer, procurer....

Manuel had the opportunity of knowing him inside out. He was a past master in all the arts of deception,—an ingrate, impudent, cowardly with the brave and brave with cowards, as petulant and vain as few, fond of attributing to himself the bravery and merit that belonged to another, and of distributing among others the defects that were exclusively his own.

Manuel noticed that the baroness was always in the habit of speaking ill of Mingote, whenever that worthy was absent, and yet, when she listened to his chatter, she did so with evident pleasure. Doubtless she admired his subtlety and the rogue’s finesse in his evil arts.

After he had been speaking for some time his shameless conversation would become repellent.

Mingote’s chief preoccupation was to conceal his cynical nature, but his cynicism, through its very powers of expansion, oozed from his very soul, glittered in his eyes, flickered on his lips and flowed in his every word.

“Folks who insult me only waste their time,” he would declare, calmly. “When it comes to shamelessness, I can’t be beat.”

And he was right. There were times in which he would realize the bad effect produced by some rascality of his, whereupon he would make special efforts to appear a very Roland or Cid of perfection. But within a very short while from out of the cuirass of this punctilious knight would stick the mountebank’s claw.

“In matters of honor I admit of no distinctions,” the man would say, in one of his knightly moods. “You may declare to me that honor is a martingale. True enough. But such is my misfortune; I am by temperament a cavalier.”

Mingote was a partisan of anarchico-philanthropico-collectivist ideas; some of his letters he ended with the salutation, “Health and Social Revolution,” which served as no obstacle against his trying to establish, at various times, a loan shop, a house of assignation and other similarly honest means of subsistence.

This ex-loan shark had collaborated in several ignominious labours with the comrades of dynamite and picric acid, wheedling money out of them, now for the purpose of effecting a coup and purchasing bombs, again for the compiling of a libertarian dictionary, wherein he, Mingote, with his formidable powers of analysis, more formidable than the highest explosives, shattered to fragments all the traditional notions of this stupid society.

Whenever Mingote spoke of his dictionary, his disdain for existence, his fanatical glance, his melancholy attitude of a soul misunderstood all indicated the genius of revolution.

On the other hand, when he recounted his successes as an advertising agent, as a business broker, the modern man would appear,—the struggle-for-lifer of the public auction and the loan shop, of the druggist and the perfumer.

“It was I,” he would boast, “who auctioned off La Chavito. I sold the stable to the Marquis de Sacro-Cerro and the lands to the Viscountess. It was I who launched the Pipot Cataphoretic; the Alex Wild Arabian Jasmine Pectoral; Chiper’s Manicure Paste; Pirogoff’s Electrical Cataplasm; Clarckson’s Peptic Flour; TomÁs y Gil’s Artificial Heart; Rocagut’s Sudorific Plaster, and yet, here I stand, utterly deserted.”

Mingote imagined that all Madrid was in a conspiracy to keep him down; but he was waiting for the opportune moment in which he should triumph over his enemies.

His greatest illusions were founded upon his mines, which, though they were supposedly wonderful, he was not averse to selling in cheap lots. He was for ever carrying around in his pockets, wrapped up in newspaper sheets, various specimens from his mines in this place and that.

“This,” and Mingote would exhibit a bit of ore, “comes from the Suspiro del Moro Mine. What a specimen! Eh? Admirable. Isn’t it? Iron ... almost pure. Ninety nine and one half per cent. mineralized. This other is of calamine. Sixty eight per cent. There are half a million tons.”

When his hoax had been discovered, not only was he unperturbed, but he would burst into laughter.

The baroness greeted Mingote’s projects with loud guffaws.

“But if you haven’t any mines, how are you going to sell them?” she would ask.

“Ah, that doesn’t matter. I invent them. It’s the same thing. As soon as we have put this thing through with Don Sergio we’ll go into business. We’ll lay out a mine; deposit, three or four hundred pesetas, whatever it amounts to. Then we’ll carry minerals from somewhere else to the land, and at once we issue shares: The Prosperity Company, Limited. Capital, 7,000,000 pesetas. We rent a building, put up an imposing copper sign with gilt lettering over the door and a servant in blue livery. We’ll collect on the shares, and the deal is worked.”

Did Mingote believe in his fancies? He himself could not have said for certain. The man was a stranger even to himself. There, within his soul, he harboured the notion of an adverse fate which prevented his prospering because he was an unblushing knave. As for skill, he had enough and to spare; nobody was as wily as he in receiving a creditor and sending him off unpaid; he was an expert in adulation and mendacity; yet, despite his constant lying, he was as gullible as any one else when it came to the deceptions of other rogues.

He believed in secret societies, in Free Masonry, in the H ... and all such mummery.

Amidst danger and perilous situations, despite the extraordinary cowardice of the ex-loan shark, his cleverness never abandoned him. Cracking a joke was a necessity to him, and in all probability, were he impaled, with the hangman’s rope around his neck, or on the very steps of the scaffold, all atremble with terror, he would have had to make some droll remark between the chattering of his teeth and the tremors of horror.

He would quarrel with folk about the most futile matters; in the street cars and at the theatres he would get into altercations with the conductors and ushers; he would raise his stick to the street-urchins, and treat everybody with the utmost disdain. He would make indecorous proposals to women in the very presence of their husbands or their parents, and despite all this, he very rarely received the cuffs or the cudgellings that any one else in his place would have earned.

Vainglorious and petulant, he himself would laugh at his petulance. He would transform his smile into a menacing gesture, and his menacing gesture into a smile; at times he felt a certain rare, comical sort of modesty and would blush, but never did he lose his self-composure.

The ex-loan shark, though he was by no means of an agreeable type, was very successful with the women. He devoted himself to old age. His tactics were rapid and expedite; after the first week he was already borrowing money.

He counted his mistresses in pairs, each with two or three little Mingotes. In complicity with them the ex-moneylender had organized a marvellous system of mendicity carried on through means of letters, and as the income from his agency kept dwindling, these mistresses, the great Mingote and the little Mingotes, managed to live upon the profits of the women. Whenever people inquired as to these women, Mingote replied that they constituted his household servants.

This was Mingote, the marvellous, rare Mingote, aider and abettor of the Baroness of Aynant.

The very day on which Manuel and the sublime pedagogue recounted the details of their visit to Don Sergio, the baroness and Mingote inaugurated their campaign. The baroness rented a parlour for a few days from a boarding-house keeper on the first floor.

“But what are you doing this for?” asked Mingote. “The worse the old man finds you situated, the more splendid it will be for our purpose.”

“I gave you credit for more cleverness than that, Mingote,” replied the baroness coldly. “If Don Sergio were to find me in a filthy hole like this, he’d throw me an alms. But otherwise,—we’ll see. For the rest, kindly let me conduct my own affairs.”

Mingote, confounded, kept silent. Undoubtedly in such a matter as this, he had something to learn.

The baroness arranged her rented room in good taste, sent one of her gowns out to be sewed and ironed, and dressed Manuel, even using rice powder, to the great desperation of the child. When all was in readiness, Mingote wrote to Don Sergio,—il vecchio Cromwell, as he called the old man,—a post card signed by PeÑalar, giving him the directions to the house.

The baroness and Manuel awaited the arrival of il vecchio. About midafternoon they heard the rumble of a carriage that drew up before their door.

“There he is,” said the baroness. She peered through the slats of the shutters. “Yes, it’s he,” she added, lying down upon the sofa and picking up a book.

When she was well dressed and decked out she appeared appetizing; a blonde, buxom, good-looking wench.

“See here. It would be better for you to go into that other room,” said the baroness to Manuel, pointing to a bedchamber. “I’ll tell him that you’re studying.”

Manuel, who was by no means delighted with the rÔle that had been assigned to him, disappeared into the alcove. Between this and the parlour was a curtained glass door. Manuel found this observation post quite comfortable, and began to spy through the shades. He was interested to see how the baroness would manage, how she would weave the strands of that deception, in which the least oversight might enmesh her.

When the maidservant of the boarding-house entered to announce Don Sergio, the baroness was already completely submerged in her part. Il vecchio came in solemnly, and saluted her; the baroness made a gesture of astonishment at sight of him, and then, with a languorous, haughty wave of the hand she indicated that he might be seated.

“The old Cromwell,” took a seat; Manuel could observe him calmly. He was pale,—of a chalky complexion.

“An ugly old papa I’ve picked up,” said Manuel to himself.

The baroness and Don Sergio began to talk in whispers. It was impossible to hear what they were saying. The chalky-complexioned old fellow gazed about the room, estimated the furniture, and was doubtless surprised to find so elegant a parlour.

Then he continued to speak heatedly; the baroness listened to him languidly, smiling with a certain amiable, kindly irony. It seemed to Manuel that all the old man needed was a pair of little horns and goat’s feet to represent, together with the baroness, a group he had seen a few days previously in a show-window on the Carrera de San JerÓnimo. The title was “The Nymph and the Satyr.” Manuel thought that the old man was about to get down on his knees, and he felt like shouting, “Get out, Cromwell!”

The old gentleman continued to speak in his insinuating manner, when all at once he grew excited and began to gesticulate violently. “This abandonment of the boy is unspeakable!” he exclaimed.

“Unspeakable!”

“Yes, seÑora.”

“But you,—what right have you to speak?”

“Every right in the world. Yes, seÑora.”

The baroness seemed to be amazed at these words, and replied with vague excuses; then she became indignant and rising most gracefully from the sofa threw the book onto the floor, and accused the irate Cromwell of every ill that might befall the boy. He was to blame for everything, because he was a miserly old wretch.

The terrible vecchio replied to this arraignment in a brusk tone, averring that to lewd, extravagant women all men were stingy.

“If you have come here,” interrupted the baroness, “to insult a woman because she is alone and unprotected, I’ll not have it.”

Then came the chalky old man’s explanations, his efforts to clear himself of blame, his offers....

“I need you for nothing,” retorted the baroness haughtily. “I did not send for you.”

The vecchio coaxingly vowed and vowed again that he had come there only to offer her whatever she might need, and to beg her to let him stand the expenses of the boy’s education. He desired also to see the youngster a moment.

The baroness allowed herself to be won over; but she warned the chalky old fellow that the boy thought his parents had died.

“No, no. Don’t worry, Paquita,” exclaimed il vecchio.

The baroness rang the bell and asked the servant, in most nonchalant fashion:

“Is Sergio at home?”

“Yes, seÑora.”

“Ask him to come in.”

Manuel entered, in confusion.

“This gentleman wishes to see you,” said the lady.

“I’ve been told—I’ve been told that you are a very good student,” mumbled il vecchio.

Manuel raised his two eyes in the greatest astonishment. Don Sergio pinched the boy’s none too rosy cheeks. Manuel stood there gazing at the floor, and after the baroness had given him permission, walked out of the room.

“He’s very shy,” explained the baroness.

“I was the same way myself when I was his age,” replied Don Sergio.

The lady smiled maliciously. Manuel went back to his place in the bed chamber and continued to spy upon them; the baroness bewailed her lack of means; Cromwell defended himself like a lion. At the conclusion of the conference the chalky old fellow drew out his wallet and deposited several banknotes upon the night table.

The baroness saw him to the door.

“So, Paquita, you are quite satisfied now?” he asked, before leaving.

“Ever so much!”

“And you’re not sorry that I came to see you?”

“Ay, Don Sergio! You deserted me so cruelly. And you—the only friend of my poor father!”

“Yes, it’s true, Paquita, it’s true,” murmured il vecchio, taking one of the baroness’s plump hands and fondling it.

And he descended the stairs, pausing every moment to bid the lady adieu.

“Good Lord, what an old bore!” she grumbled, slamming the door. “Manuel, Manolito, you did splendidly! You’re a hero! Did you see? Il vecchio Cromwell, as Mingote calls him, has left a thousand pesetas. This very next day we move.”

Very early on the following morning the baroness and Manuel went out in search of new rooms. After endless running about, their heads almost out of joint from so much gazing upward, they found a third floor apartment in the Plaza de Oriente, with which the baroness was simply enchanted. It cost twenty-five duros per month.

“It’ll seem dear to NiÑa Chucha, but I’ll take it,” said the baroness.

So she called at the first floor, where the house agent lived, talked to him and made an advance payment.

They moved in that very day, and Manuel laboured away with enthusiasm, carrying furniture from one place to the other, and setting the pieces down in the new quarters as NiÑa Chucha directed him.

As the furnishings of the house were rather meagre, and the baroness had some things stored away in the home of a Cuban woman, a friend of hers, she went several days later to see the lady and ask for the furniture. She did not show up during that whole day, nor did she appear for supper, but returned very late at night. NiÑa Chucha and Manuel waited up for her. She came home with eyes that shone more brightly than usual.

“The Colonel’s wife wouldn’t let me go,” she mumbled. “I dined with her, then I went with her daughters to the Apolo and they saw me to the door.”

Manuel could not understand how this could be so unusual for the baroness, and was quite astonished to hear her reply to NiÑa Chucha’s recriminations, stammering and laughing at the top of her voice in a most incoherent manner. Manuel would have sworn that, as she left the dining-room, the baroness stumbled, but he was so sleepy that he was not certain, and he refrained from comment.

On the following day, just before lunch, NiÑa Chucha was in the street when there was a knock at the door. Manuel opened. It was the chalky old man.

“Hello, student,” he saluted. “And where is DoÑa Paquita?”

“In her room,” was Manuel’s reply.

Don Sergio rapped at the door with his knuckles and repeated several times:

“May I come in?”

“Come in, Don Sergio,” invited the baroness, “and open the windows.”

The old man entered the room, tripped against the packages scattered over the floor, and opened the balcony shutters.

“But, dear Paquita? Still abed?” he asked, greatly astonished. “That’s not good for your health.”

“Oh, if you could only see how hard I’ve been working,” replied the baroness, stretching herself. “Yesterday I went to bed completely exhausted, and at five this morning I was already at work. But all this dragging of household effects has given me a terrible headache, and has forced me to lie down again.”

“Why do you work so hard? You don’t have to.”

“There are things to be done; then again, in this house there is no one to lend a hand. All Chucha does is read novels. And as for Sergio, I’m not going to have him travel around like a porter. So that everything falls on my shoulders. I hope I’ll be feeling much better some other day, and then you’ll have the pleasure of seeing what a good girlie I am, and how I follow your instructions to the letter.”

“Excellent, Paquita, excellent. Just keep on being a good little girlie.”

The baroness, to prove how genuine was her girlishness, bestowed a few caresses upon Cromwell and then, in an indifferent tone, asked him for fifty pesetas.

“But....”

“Indeed I know that you’re going to scold me. Don’t you imagine that I’ve spent all the money, or anything like it. The truth is, I have a five-hundred peseta note that I don’t want to break, and as there’s a little account I’ve got to settle....”

“Very well, here you are.” And Don Sergio, with a smile that was meant to be amiable, extracted his pocket book from his pocket and left a blue bill upon the night table; whereupon he was seized with the notion that it was not very gallant to leave only what had been asked for, so he deposited another note.

The baroness placed the candlestick upon the two notes and then, huddling into the bedclothes, she murmured in a drowsy voice:

“Ay, Don Sergio, my headache’s coming back!”

“Take good care of yourself, then, my dear. Take good care and don’t work so hard.”

After closing the balcony shutters, Don Sergio left the bedroom and met NiÑa Chucha, who had just come in from the street.

“You shouldn’t allow your mistress to work so hard,” he said to her dryly. “She’s getting ill.”

The mulattress gazed smilingly at the old man.

“Very good, sir,” she said.

“And the boy,—what’s he doing?”

“He’s studying,” answered NiÑa Chucha sarcastically, pointing to Manuel, who sat resting his elbows upon the dining-room table with his head in his hands.

And indeed he was devouring one of the serial issues of a novel by TÁrrago y Mateos.

CHAPTER VI

Kate, The Pale Lass—Roberto’s Love Affairs—Military Punctilio—Wicked Women—Anthropological Disquisitions

A month after they were settled in their new apartment, Christmas came, and, as there were holidays in all the schools, the baroness went to fetch her daughter at the Sacred Heart, returning with her in a carriage.

NiÑa Chucha undertook to inform Manuel about the baroness’s daughter, and give him full details.

“She’s a simpleton, understand? A pale, insipid creature, who looks like a doll.”

Manuel knew her, but he was not sure whether she would recall him. During the years since he had seen her she had grown into a winsome girl. She did not resemble her mother, though, like her, she was blonde; she must rather take after her father. She was pale, with correct features, clear blue eyes, golden eyebrows and lashes, and fair hair that lacked lustre, yet was quite alluring.

When the schoolgirl arrived, NiÑa Chucha outdid herself in demonstrations of affection; the newcomer recognized Manuel, and this filled him with a deep satisfaction.

The baroness’s daughter was called Catalina, her relations from Antwerp called her Kate, but the baroness generally referred to her as La Nena,—the baby.

With the arrival of Kate the habits of the household underwent a marked change; the baroness abandoned her nocturnal excursions and put a check upon her loose tongue. At table with a sad smile, she gave ear to the school tales that her daughter related, without the slightest interest in what she heard.

There was no harmony between the two characters. Kate was slow of understanding, but deep; her mother, on the other hand, was gifted with the subtlety and cleverness of the moment. The baroness, at times, grew impatient as Kate spoke on, and would say, with mingled kindliness and boredom:

“Oh, what a simpleton of a baby I have!”

Since Kate’s coming, NiÑa Chucha and Manuel ceased keeping the baroness company in the dining-room. This did not trouble Manuel in the least, but the mulattress was quite put out, and she attributed this arrangement to Kate, whom she considered a pale, proud doll, cold and heartless. Manuel, who had no reason for disliking Kate, found her very simple, very likeable, although lacking vivacity.

During the Christmas holidays mother and daughter often went out together on shopping tours; they were accompanied by Manuel, who returned loaded with bundles.

One day, shortly after the New Year, when the baroness, Kate and Manuel had gone to the Apolo Theatre to see “Captain Grant’s Nephews,” Manuel caught sight of Roberto Hasting following them at a certain distance. As they left the theatre, Roberto shadowed them; the girl pretended she had noticed nothing.

The next day, it was snowing. Manuel noticed Roberto walking across the Plaza del Oriente, seemingly very much engrossed.

Manuel sought a pretext under which to leave the house and Roberto at once came over to him.

“Are you in her house?” he asked hurriedly.

“Yes.”

“You must deliver a letter to her.”

“Certainly.”

“I’ll bring it to you this afternoon. Give it to her and tell me how she receives it. She’ll not answer me, I know she’ll not answer me. But you’ll hand it to her, won’t you?”

“Of course. Don’t worry.”

Surely enough, that very afternoon Roberto walked again through the falling snow, Manuel ran down, took the letter and dashed back into the house.

At that moment Kate was amusing herself with her wardrobe. She had a thousand gew-gaws stored in a number of little boxes; in some, medallions; in others, small prints, chromographs, gifts from her schoolmates or the family. Her prayer books were filled with little pictures and souvenirs.

Manuel, with Roberto’s missive in his pocket, drew near to the girl like a criminal. La Nena exhibited all her wealth to him; he swelled with pride. Manuel scarcely dared to touch the medallions, the jewels, the thousand things that Kate had treasured up.

“My uncle gave me this chain,” said the schoolgirl. “This ring comes from my grandfather. This pansy I picked in Hyde Park, when I was at my uncle’s in London.”

Manuel listened to her without a word, ashamed to have the letter in his pocket. La Nena continued showing new things to him. She still preserved her childhood playthings; in her wardrobe everything was classified with the utmost precision; each article had its place. In some of the books she pressed pansies and other flowers, afterwards copying them and filling in the sketch with water-colours.

Manuel made two or three attempts to bring the conversation round to Roberto, but his courage failed him.

All at once, after much clearing of his throat, he stammered:

“D-do you know ...?”

“What?”

“Roberto ... that fair student who used to board at the other house ... the fellow who was at the theatre yesterday ... he gave me a letter for you.”

“For me?” And Kate’s cheeks flushed pink, while her eyes sparkled with much more than their usual vivaciousness.

“Yes.”

“Give it to me.”

“Here it is.”

Manuel handed over the letter and Kate quickly thrust it into her bosom. She finished arranging her wardrobe and soon afterward locked herself in her room. Two days later Kate sent Manuel off with a note for Roberto, who responded at once with another for Kate.

One day Kate went with Manuel to his school, where they were giving a Nativity play, and she was accompanied both ways by Roberto. They both were very talkative. The student expatiated upon his plans. It struck Manuel that this love business was rather queer. As far as he could see, Roberto did not say a thing worth hearing, and yet Kate listened to him with her soul hanging upon every word.

Roberto, to Kate, was the paragon of respectability. She spoke to him with calm solemnity, making no attempt to appear gay or clever; she was very attentive to all he said.

Manuel became the confidant of Roberto and Kate. The girl was of immaculate candor and innocence, and extraordinarily ignorant in matters of guile. Manuel felt a genuine submissiveness before that aristocratic, elegant nature; he was filled with a feeling of inferiority that in no wise troubled him.

La Nena recounted to Manuel all the things she had seen in Paris, Brussels, Ghent; she told him about the parks of London, much to his amazement. In return, Manuel enlightened Kate as to life in the underworld of Madrid, filling her in turn with the utmost astonishment: the cellars, the taverns, the tramps; he described to her the urchins who ran away from home and slept in the nooks and crannies of the churches; he spoke to her of the ragamuffins who pilfer in the laundries; he told her what the shelters were like....

Manuel possessed a certain gift for imparting his impressions; he would exaggerate and fill in with figments of his imagination the gaps left by reality. La Nena would listen to him in a rapture of interest.

“Oh, how frightful!” she would say. And the mere thought that this wretched rabble of which Manuel spoke might rub elbows with her made her tremble.

The maiden felt a deep repugnance for the common people; she would not go out on Sundays, so as to avoid mingling with soldiers and men in labourers’ smocks. It seemed to her that common folk must be inherently wicked. As soon as the street lamps were lighted she preferred to be indoors.

They used to hold their conversations at nightfall in a room that looked out on to the street, whence could be seen the Plaza de Oriente, like a wood, and the Royal Palace, to whose cornices hundreds of pigeons repaired after winging about all day in flocks. As a background there was the Casa del Campo and the horizon which reddened with the approach of dusk....

After Epiphany, Kate returned to school, whereupon the old habits were re-established in the household and the customary disorder reigned.

The first nocturnal sally that the baroness made was to her Cuban friend, in the company of Manuel. The baroness and Manuel left after supper. The Cuban lady lived in the Calle Ancha. They knocked; a diminutive lackey in blue livery and gold braid opened the door, and they passed through a corridor into a lavishly lighted drawing-room, decorated in cheap, loud taste. In the centre stood an electric lamp with a cluster of seven or eight globes; there was a huge sofa upholstered in a very flowery stuff; two gilt chairs shone beside a fire-place, upon the marble mantelpiece of which sat a clock in the form of a ball, a barometer fashioned like a hammer, a thermometer that represented a dagger, and sundry other things in the most absurd shapes. Photographs hung on every wall.

Only a few disreputable looking women were present; they humbly rose. The baroness took a seat, and shortly after, the Cuban entered,—a very common, brutal woman, dressed in an exceedingly loud costume, and wearing thick diamonds in her ears and on her fingers. She took the baroness’s hand and sat down on a sofa beside her. It could easily be seen that she desired to flatter her visitor. The Colonel’s wife was more than a common woman; she was bestial. She had a prominent jaw, tiny black eyes and a mouth that bespoke cruelty. Her features betrayed a certain disturbing, menacing lubricity; one imagined that such a woman must be the prey to strange vices,—that she was capable of crime.

Manuel, from his place in a corner, busied himself with the examination of a photograph album that he discovered upon a night table.

The wife of the colonel, whom the baroness had known as a sergeant in Cuba, said that she thought her younger girl, Lulu, would make her dÉbut as a dancer in a certain Salon; she was giving her the final lessons.

“Really?” asked the baroness.

“Oh, yes, indeed. Mingote got her the contract and has taken charge of the finishing touches, as he puts it. Ah, what an accomplished fellow! He’s in the dining-room now, with some friends. He’ll be right in. Mingote brought a poet along who has written a monologue for the dear, clever little girl. It’s called “Snap-shots.” That’s a modernistic name, isn’t it?”

“I should say.”

“It’s supposed to be a girl who goes out into the streets to take photographs and she meets with a young blade who approaches her and suggests that she make him a reproduction or a group, and she replies: ‘Hey there, don’t you dare touch my chassis!’ Now, isn’t that clever?”

“Exquisite,” declared the baroness, eyeing Manuel and laughing.

The other women,—distinguished kitchen-maids to judge from their appearance,—nodded their heads in token of assent, and smiled sadly.

“Have you many guests in your room?” asked the baroness.

“As yet no one has come. In the meantime, suppose the child dances a little and lets you see what she can do.”

The Colonel’s wife shouted into the corridor, whereupon Lulu appeared, attired in a skirt covered with spangles, and wearing curly bobbed hair. She was all put out because she had not been able to find a wrist-watch, and was shrilling in her thin, rasping voice.

“Let the people inside know,” said the Colonel’s wife, “that you’ll be here.”

The girl left with the message, and within a short while the colonel himself appeared,—a respectable gentleman, with a white beard, who was lame and leaned upon Mingote’s arm. Behind these two came a slender young man with fair moustaches and red cheeks; this was, as the baroness gathered, the poet. Then followed a long-haired personage, the piano instructor, on whose arm nestled the elder daughter of the house,—a fair, buxom wench who seemed to have escaped from a painting by Rubens.

“Well, which shall we have first?” asked the Colonel’s wife. “The monologue or the dance?”

“The monologue, the monologue,” was the general chorus.

“Let’s see, then. Silence.”

The poet, who, to judge from the glitter in his eyes and the colour of his cheeks, was quite drunk, smiled amiably.

The little girl began to recite very badly, in the voice of a hoarse rooster, a heap of coarse banalities in doggerel that would have brought a blush to the tanned and weather-beaten cheeks of a coast-guard. And every one of these banalities wound up with the refrain

At the conclusion the colonel offered the opinion that the verses struck him somewhat ... somewhat,—oh,—just a wee bit free, and he looked from one face to another for corroboration. The point was heatedly discussed. The head of the house presented his arguments, but Mingote’s rebuttal was conclusive.

“No, my dear Colonel,” ended the ex-loan shark excitedly. “The fact is that you feel military honour too keenly. You regard this from the standpoint of a soldier.”

The baroness stared at Mingote in amazement, and could not contain her laughter.

The colonel explained in confidence to Mingote the reason why the military conception of honour must perforce be more rigid than that of civilians. There was the necessity of discipline, there was order, and the uniform.

After the monologue, the personage with the flowing hair sat down to the piano and the little girl began to dance the tango. In this, too, there was something that required elucidation, and the Colonel’s wife was eager to have it settled at the very moment. Of such vital importance was it. There is a genuinely solemn, transcendental part to the tango: that hip-movement which the public scientifically calls “the hinge.” “Now,” asked the Colonel’s wife, “how is Lulu to perform this part of the tango,—that is, the hinge? Is she to play it to the limit, or cover it up a trifle?”

The baroness did not think that the tango should be so highly accentuated; a little of that movement would not be so bad. The Colonel’s wife and Mingote protested, affirming that the public always prefers the “hinge,” as it is more exciting.

The colonel, despite his military honour, was of the opinion that the public really did prefer “the hinge,” but that a little more or less of wiggling was a minor matter.

Whereupon Mingote, in order to show the little girl how to do that movement, arose and began to wiggle his hips in the most grotesque fashion.

The girl imitated his example smilingly, but without the least enthusiasm. At this juncture the Colonel’s wife whispered into the baroness’s ear that only a man could teach a woman the grace and charm of that movement. The baroness smiled discreetly.

The diminutive gold-braided lackey entered with the announcement that SeÑor FernÁndez had arrived. This FernÁndez must have been a person of some importance, for the Colonel’s wife arose at once and prepared to leave.

“Hurry, start the roulette,” said the colonel to his wife. “And have the lights put on in the large room. What do you say?” he went on, turning to the baroness. “Shall we go into the game as partners?”

“We’ll see later, my dear Colonel. At first I’ll try my luck alone.”

“Very well.”

Lula danced another tango and after a brief while the Colonel’s wife returned.

“You may come in,” she said.

The old kitchen-maids got up from their chairs and, crossing the corridor, entered a large room with three balcony windows. There were two tables, one of them with a roulette wheel and the other bare.

The three old women, the baroness, the colonel and his two daughters sat down before the roulette table, where the banker and the two payers were already seated.

“Faites vos jeux,” said the croupier with the impassivity of an automaton.

The white sphere danced around the wheel and before it came to a stop the croupier pronounced:

“Rien ne va plus!”

The two payers placed their rakes upon the cloth to prevent the laying of any further bets. “No more bets,” they repeated, at the same time, in a monotonous voice.

Gradually the room was filling with people, and the seats around the table were taken.

Beside the baroness a man of about forty had taken a chair. He was tall, robust, broad-shouldered, with black, kinky hair and white teeth.

“Why, my boy, you here?” exclaimed the baroness.

“And how about you?” he retorted.

He was a second or third cousin of the baroness; his name was Horacio.

“Didn’t you tell me that you invariably retired at nine?” asked the baroness.

“It’s only an accident that I came here. It’s the first time.”

“Bah.”

“I assure you it is. Shall we go in it together?”

“That is not a bad idea.”

They pooled their money and continued playing. Horacio played according to the baroness’s directions. They were lucky and won. Gradually the parlor became thronged with a variegated, exotic crowd. There were two well-known members of the aristocracy, a bull-fighter, soldiers. Several women and their daughters were pressed closely around the tables.

Manuel caught sight of Irene, DoÑa Violante’s granddaughter, beside an old gentleman with his hair pasted down. The man was playing heavily. His fingers were fairly concealed by rings set with huge stones.

Seated upon a divan near Manuel, a very pale and emaciated old gentleman with a white beard was conversing with a beardless youth who looked bored.

“Have you withdrawn from the game so soon?” asked the young man.

“Yes. I withdrew because my money ran out. Otherwise I’d have kept on playing until they found me lying dead across the green cloth. To me, this is the only life. I’m like La Valiente. She knows me, and she says to me now and then: ‘Let’s go in it together, Marquis?’—‘I won’t bring you bad luck,’ is my answer.”

“Who is La Valiente?”

“You’ll see her soon, when the baccarat begins.”

A light was turned on over the table.

An old man with moustaches like a musketeer’s arose with a deck of cards in his hands and leaned against the edge of the table.

“Who deals?” asked the old man.

“Fifty duros,” murmured one.

“Sixty.”

“A hundred.”

“A hundred and fifty duros.”

“Two hundred,” shrieked a woman’s voice.

“That’s La Valiente,” said the marquis.

Manuel contemplated her with curiosity. She was between thirty and forty; she wore a tailor-made costume and a FrÉgoli hat. She was very dark, with an olive complexion and beautiful black eyes. She would gamble until she could hardly see, and then go out into the corridors for a smoke. She brimmed over with energy and intelligence. They said she carried a revolver. She had no use for men and fell passionately in love with women. Her most recent conquest had been the colonel’s elder daughter, the buxom blonde, whom she dominated. At times she was favored by the most unbelievable luck, and to assuage her pangs of passion, she played and won in most insolent fashion.

“And that fellow who never plays, yet is always here,—who is he?” asked the young man, pointing to a coarse looking old fellow of about seventy, with dyed moustaches.

“He’s a moneylender who, I believe, is the partner of the Colonel’s wife. When I was Governor of La CoruÑa he was waiting trial for some piece of smuggling or other that he had perpetrated at the Customs House. They removed him from office, and then gave him a commission in the Philippines.”

“As a reward?”

“My dear man, everybody has to live,” replied the marquis. “I don’t know what he did in the Philippines, but he was in court several times, and when he was free they gave him a position in Cuba.”

“They wanted him to make a study of the Spanish colonial rÉgime,” suggested the youth.

“Doubtless. He got into a few scrapes over there, too, until he returned and went into the money-lending business. They say now that he is worth not less than a million pesetas.”

“The deuce, he is!”

“He’s a serious, modest fellow. Up to a few years ago he lived with a certain Paca, who was the proprietress of a dyer’s shop on the Calle de Hortaleza, and on Sundays they’d both go out to the suburbs like a poor couple. This Paca died, and now he lives alone. He’s shy and humble; many a time he himself goes out and does the buying, and then cooks his own meal. His old secretary is a really interesting chap. When it comes to forgery he can’t be beaten.”

Manuel listened most attentively.

“That’s what you really can call a man,” said the marquis, eyeing the secretary closely.

The man they were watching,—a person with a red, pointed beard and a mocking air, turned around and saluted the speaker affably.

“Hello, there, Master,” said the marquis to him.

“You call him Master?” asked the young man.

“That’s what everybody calls him.”

Lulu, the colonel’s daughter, and two girl friends of hers passed by the marquis and his young companion.

“How pretty they are,” commented the marquis.

The place took on the mixed appearance of a brothel and a high-class den of vice. There was here neither the anxious silence of the gambling-house nor the confused clamour of a brothel: people gambled and loved with discretion. As the Colonel’s wife put it, this was a very modernistic gathering.

On the divans the girls were conversing very animatedly with the men; they were discussing and studying out combinations for the game....

“All this delights me,” said the marquis with his pale smile.

The baroness was beginning to feel somewhat nauseated and wished to be going.

“I’m off. Will you come along with me, Horacio?” she asked of her cousin.

“Certainly. I’ll accompany you.”

The baroness arose, then Horacio; Manuel joined them.

“What a mob of creatures, eh?” said the baroness with that peculiar, ingenuous laugh of hers, once they were in the street.

“That’s amorality, as they say nowadays,” replied Horacio. “We Spaniards aren’t immoral. The fact is that we simply have no notion of morality. When I got up to take a little air, the colonel said to me, ‘You see, you see, they’ve cut down my pay: reduced it from eighty to seventy. So clearly enough I have to find other sources of income. That’s why soldiers’ daughters have to become dancers ... and all the rest.’”

“Did he say that to you? What a barbarian!”

“What? Does that shock you? Not me. It’s just a natural and necessary consequence of our race. We’ve degenerated. We are a race of the lowest class.”

“Why?”

“Because we are. All you’ve got to do is look around you. Did you see the head on the colonel’s shoulders?”

“No. Has he anything in his head?” asked the baroness jokingly.

“Not a thing. The brains of a Papuan. Morality is found only in superior races. The English say that Wellington is superior to Napoleon because Wellington fought through a sense of duty and Napoleon for glory. The idea of duty never penetrates into craniums like the colonel’s. Talk to a Mandingo of duty. Nothing doing. Oh, anthropology is a most instructive science. I explain everything by anthropological laws.”

They were passing by the CafÉ de Varela.

“Shall we go in here?” asked her cousin.

“Let’s go.”

The three sat down around a table, each asked for a favourite drink and the baroness’s cousin continued his speech.

The man was a queer type; he spoke an almost incomprehensible Andalusian dialect, with a guttural h; he had enough money to subsist upon and with this, and a minor position in a ministry, he managed to get along. He dwelt in a very carefully regulated disorder, reading Spencer in English and changing his mode of life at certain seasons.

Like the whimsical fellow he was, he had been sunk for the past four or five years in the swampy fields of sociology and anthropology. He was convinced that intellectually he was an Anglo-Saxon, who need not be occupied with questions pertaining to Spain or to any other nation of the South.

“Yes, indeed,” continued Horacio as he filled his glass with beer, “I explain everything, down to the tiniest detail, by social or biological laws. This morning, as I was getting up, I heard my landlady conversing with the baker about the rise in the cost of bread. ‘Why has bread gone up?’ she asked him. ‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘They say that the harvest is good.’ ‘Well, then?’ ‘I don’t know.’ I went off to the office at the precise hour, with English punctuality; there was nobody there; that’s the Spanish custom. So I asked myself, How does it happen that bread goes up if there’s a good harvest? And I hit upon the explanation which I think will convince you. You know that there are tiny cells in the brain.”

“How should I know anything about that?” retorted the baroness, dipping a biscuit into her chocolate.

“Well, take my word for it, there are cells, and, according to the opinion of the physiologists, each cell has its own particular function; one serves for one thing, another for another. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. Now just recall that in Spain there are some thirteen millions of inhabitants who can neither read nor write. Do you follow me?”

“Certainly. Of course.”

“Very well. That cell which in educated persons is employed in attempts at understanding and thinking, is here left unemployed by thirteen millions of the population. That energy which they should expend in discussion, they waste in bestial instincts. As a consequence, crime increases, so does sexual appetite, and with the increase of sexual appetite comes an increase in the consumption of food, whereupon bread goes up.”

The baroness could not help bursting into laughter at her cousin’s explanation.

“That’s no mere fancy,” replied Horacio, “it’s the God’s honest truth.”

“Indeed I don’t doubt it, but the news strikes me funny.” Manuel, too, had to laugh.

“Where did you pick up this kid?”

“He’s the son of a woman we knew. What does your science tell you of him?”

“Let’s see. Remove your cap.”

Manuel removed his cap.

“He’s a Celt,” proclaimed Horacio. “Fine race. Facial angle open; broad forehead; not much jaw....”

“And what does all this signify?” queried Manuel.

“In the final analysis, nothing. Have you any money?”

“I? Not a button.”

“Then let me tell you this: since you have no money, and aren’t a man of prey, and can’t use your intelligence, even though you may have some, which I believe is the case, you’ll probably die in a hospital.”

“How rude!” exclaimed the baroness. “Don’t talk like that to the boy.”

Manuel greeted the prognostication with laughter; it seemed very comical to him.

“On the other hand, I,” went on Horacio, “have no fear of dying in a hospital. Look at my head; see that jaw; tokens of a most brutal instinct of acquisitiveness. I’m a Berber by race,—a Euro-African. And fortunately, I may add, I have been influenced by the ideas of Lord Bacon’s pragmatic philosophy. If it weren’t for that, I’d now be dancing tangoes in Cuba or Puerto Rico.”

“So that, thanks to this Lord, you’re a civilized man?”

“Relatively civilized. I don’t pretend to compare myself to an Englishman. Can I be certain that I’m an Aryan? Am I, perhaps, a Celt or Saxon? I don’t deceive myself. I am of an inferior race. What am I going to do about it? I wasn’t born in Manchester, but in CamagÜey, and I was brought up in MÁlaga. Just imagine that!”

“And what has that to do with the case?”

“Everything, my dear. Civilization comes with rainfall. It is in the moist, rainy countries that the most civilized types are nurtured, and the most beautiful as well. Types such as your daughter, with those blue eyes of hers, her fair complexion and her blond hair.”

“And how about me? What am I?” asked the baroness. “A little of what you said before?”

“A tiny bit Berber, you mean?”

“Yes. I think that was it. A tiny bit Berber, eh?”

“In character, perhaps, but not in type. You’re pure Aryan; your ancestors must have come from India, from the meseta of Pamir or the valley of Cabul, but they did not pass through Africa. You may rest easy on that score.”

The baroness eyed her cousin with a somewhat enigmatical expression. After a short while the cousins and Manuel left the cafÉ.

CHAPTER VII

The Berber Feels Profoundly Anglo-Saxon—The Mephistophelian Mingote—Cogolludo—Kate’s Departure

Ever since the baroness and the sociologist had met at the garrulous gathering of the Colonel’s wife, Horacio began to frequent the baroness’s house and deliver courses in anthropology and sociology in the dining-room. Manuel had no idea as to what those sciences might be in the original, but as translated into Adalusian by the baroness’s cousin, they were certainly picturesque. Manuel and NiÑa Chucha listened to the Berber with intense interest, and at times offered objections, which he answered, if not with very scientific arguments at least with an abundance of wit.

Cousin Horacio got into the habit of staying for supper and finally remained after supper as well. NiÑa Chucha favoured the Berber perhaps through racial affinity, and laughed, showing her white teeth, whenever Don Sergio came on a visit.

The situation was compromising because the baroness cared not a whit about anything. After having used Mingote, she sent him away two or three times without so much as a cÉntimo. The agent began to threaten, and one day he came resolved to raise a scandal. He spoke of the forging of Manuel’s certificates, and hinted that this would cost the baroness a term in jail. She replied that the responsibility of the forgery rested with Mingote,—that she would find some one to protect her, and that, in case justice should intervene, the one to go to jail would be he.

Mingote threatened, shrieked, shouted at the top of his lungs, and who should come walking in at the height of the dispute but Horacio.

“What’s the trouble? You can hear the noise from the street,” he said.

“This man is insulting me,” cried the baroness.

Horacio seized Mingote by the scruff of the neck and shot him through the doorway. Mingote dissolved into curses, introducing Horacio’s mother into the altercation, whereupon the latter, forgetting Lord Bacon, felt the Berber in his blood, raised his foot and planted the toe of his boot upon Mingote’s buttocks. The agent shouted even more loudly, whereupon the Berber again caressed with his foot the roundest part of Mingote’s person.

The baroness foresaw that the agent would need time to take his revenge; she did not believe that he would dare to mention the forgery of the documents involving Manuel’s paternity, for his fingers would be caught in the same door. He would, however, be likely to inform Don Sergio of cousin Horacio’s presence in the house. Before he could do this, she wrote the merchant a letter asking for money with which to pay off certain debts. She sent Manuel with the missive.

The chalky old fellow read the letter and grew uneasy.

“See here, tell your ... mistress she’ll have to wait. I, too, have to wait very often.”

The baroness was furious at this reply.

“The coarse old brute! The vile beast! It’s all my fault for having bothered with the disgusting old duffer. Just wait till he comes. I’ll tell him what’s what.”

But Don Sergio did not show up, and the baroness, who surmised what had taken place, moved to a cheaper house in order to economize. NiÑa Chucha, Manuel and the three dogs were thus transferred to a third-floor apartment on the Calle del Ave MarÍa.

Here the idyll begun between the baroness and Horacio resumed its course, despite the fact that the latter, because of his Anglo-Saxon, phlegmatic temperament, or because of the low esteem in which he held women—a patrimony of the southern races—attached little importance to flirtations of this kind.

From time to time, in order to meet the expenses of the house, the baroness would sell or pawn a piece of furniture; but, with the disorder which reigned in that household, the money did not last long.

When they had been settled for about a month in the Calle del Ave MarÍa, Don Sergio appeared one morning boiling with indignation. The baroness refused to receive him, and sent the servant maid to say that she was out. The old man went away and that afternoon wrote the baroness a letter.

Mingote had not “peached.” Don Sergio fumed; it did not appear seemly to him that Horacio should spend his days and nights in the baroness’s home; he did not mind an occasional visit from her cousin, but his assiduity,—that was the rub. The baroness showed the letter to her cousin; he, who doubtless was just hunting for some pretext under which he might escape, bethought himself of Lord Bacon, suddenly felt the Anglo-Saxon in him rise,—the Aryan, man of morals,—and ceased his visits to the home of the baroness.

The baroness, who was suffering from the final flush of romanticism that comes with the Indian summer of youth, sank into despair, addressed epistles to the gallant, but he continued to feel Anglo-Saxon and Aryan, ever mindful of Lord Bacon.

In the meantime Don Sergio, finding that his letter had produced no results, returned to his mission and came again to the house.

“My dear Paquita, what can possibly be the trouble with you?” he asked, gazing upon her altered features.

“I believe I’ve caught the grippe, my head feels so heavy. I have aches all over my body. Here you see me, utterly abandoned. It is God’s will, I suppose.”

Don Sergio listened silently to the whirlwind of words and wails with which the baroness tried to clear herself of blame; then he said:

“This sort of life can’t go on. You must introduce some method, some semblance of order. Things simply can’t go on like this.”

“That’s just what I’ve been thinking,” answered the baroness. “I understand well enough that this sort of life isn’t for me. I’ll go back to another house at twelve duros.”

“And the furniture?”

“I’ll sell it.”

How was she to tell him that she had already sold it?

“No, I....” The chalky fellow was about to speak like a crafty merchant, but he did not dare. “Then again,” he went on, “these frequent visits of your cousin aren’t at all nice.”

“But what can I do if he pursues me,” murmured the baroness in a plaintive voice. “That man is simply mad over me. I know that such a passion is rare. A woman of my years....”

“Don’t talk like that, Paquita.”

“Well, then, there you are. He follows me like a shadow. But you’ll see, now; I’ll see that he never comes here any more.”

“Never come! He certainly will come, until you tell him not to, in so many words....”

“That’s just what I’ve told him, and that’s why he’ll never come any more.”

“All the better, then.”

The baroness glared at Don Sergio in indignation, and then assumed an air of deep contrition.

Don Sergio brought forward his plans for regeneration, and was of the opinion that Paquita ought to get rid of NiÑa Chucha, whom the chalky old gentleman detested most cordially. But the baroness protested that she loved the girl as her own child—almost as much as, if not more than, the dogs, which were the very apple of her eyes.

The baroness suddenly sat up on the sofa.

“I have a plan,” she said to Don Sergio. “Tell me what you think of it. In yesterday’s Imparcial I saw advertised a country house in Cogolludo, with a garden and orchard, at fifty duros per annum. I imagine that it must be a pretty bad place; but, at least it’s a bit of land and a place to live, and even a tiny cabin is enough for me. I could be fitting up the cabin gradually. What do you think of the suggestion, Don Sergio?”

“But why should you leave this place?”

“I didn’t want to tell you,” answered the baroness. “But that fellow simply persecutes me with his insistent attentions.” And she related a heap of lies. The good lady solaced herself with the illusion that her cousin was pursuing her relentlessly, and all the letters that she had written to him she represented as having been written by him to her.

“Naturally,” she went on, “I don’t have to go to the end of the world to avoid that ridiculous troubador.”

“But there’s no train to Cogolludo. You’re going to be awfully bored.”

“Bah! I’ll simply shut myself up in my hut like a saint, and devote myself to watering my garden and tending my flowers ... but I am so unlucky that I’m certain some one must have rented the place by now.”

“No, I’m sure not. But I really don’t see the necessity of your leaving. The boy won’t be able to attend school.”

“He doesn’t need it any more. He’ll continue his studies independently.”

“Very well. We’ll rent the house.”

“Yes, for otherwise that low fellow will keep on pestering me. I wish they’d drag him off to jail and hang him! Ah, Don Sergio! When will Carlos VII come? I don’t believe in liberty or constitutional guarantees for rascals.”

“Come, come, woman. This will all straighten itself out in due season. Take heart, and make haste.”

“Thanks, Don Sergio. You were always such a strong man. A rock.... A Tarpeian rock. And you don’t know where to keep your money. Keep me in mind! You know that I’m a most orderly creature and that I neither stint nor squander.”

This was great virtue of the baroness—she knew herself thoroughly.

Once the decision was reached to go to Cogolludo, NiÑa Chucha and Manuel began to pack the furniture. In the midst of the packing, however, the mulattress remarked that she was very sorry, but that she would remain at a house in Madrid.

“But, my dear girl, what are you going to do?”

The servant, annoyed by these questions, confessed that a young gentleman from South America, a little rastacouÈre who felt homesick for his cocoa-nut trees, had offered her a place as housekeeper in his apartment.

The baroness did not dare speak of morality, and the sole bit of advice that she offered was, that if the South American were not to content himself simply with her services as housekeeper, she had better watch out for her interests; but the girl was no fool and, as she said, had already taken all precautions to land safely, on both her feet.

Manuel was left alone in the house to finish the tasks necessary to the removal. One afternoon, as he was returning from the EstaciÓn del MediodÍa, he came upon Mingote, who, the moment he spied Manuel, ran after him.

“Where are you rushing?” he panted. “Any one would have thought that you were trying to get away from me.”

“I? What nonsense! I’m very glad to see you.”

“I, too.”

“What do you say to going into this cafÉ? I’ll pay for the drinks.”

“Come on.”

They walked into the CafÉ de Zaragoza. Mingote ordered two coffees, note paper, pen and ink.

“Would you mind writing something that I’ll dictate to you?”

“Well, that depends upon what it is.”

“All I want you to do is to write a letter telling me that you’re not Sergio Figueroa but Manuel AlcÁzar.”

“And what do you want me to write that for? Don’t you know it as well as I do?” asked Manuel, innocently.

“Oh, it’s a plan I’m working on.”

“And what is there in it for me?”

“Thirty duros.”

“You mean it? Hand ’em over!”

“No, not now. When the deal is put through.”

Finding Manuel so favourably inclined, Mingote told him that if he could manage to steal the forged documents of his paternity from the baroness and hand them over to him, he’d add twenty more duros to the thirty already offered.

“I have the papers put away,” said Manuel. “If you’ll wait here a moment I’ll bring them to you at once.”

“Fine. I’ll be waiting here. What a sorry idiot this boy is,” thought Mingote. “He really imagines that I’m going to give him fifty duros. The fool!”

An hour went by; then another. No Manuel was forthcoming.

“Can the idiot have been myself?” exclaimed Mingote. “No doubt about it. Can that damned kid have fooled me?”

While Mingote stood there waiting, the baroness and Manuel had taken the train.

They reached Cogolludo and the baroness was bitterly disappointed. She had thought that the town would be a sort of gipsy hamlet, and instead she found an ugly village in the midst of a plain.

The house she had rented was on the outskirts of the village; it was spacious, with a blue door, three tiny windows peeping on to the road, and a poultry-yard in the rear. It must have been standing vacant for the past ten years. On the day after they arrived the baroness and Manuel swept and cleaned and dusted. The poor woman bitterly lamented her action.

“Oh, God in heaven, what a house!” she wailed. “What ever in the world did we come here for? And such a village! I had caught a passing glimpse of one or more towns in Spain, but in the North, where there are trees. This is so dry, so barren!”

Manuel was in his glory; the land near the house produced only nettles and dwarf elders, but he imagined that he could transform that patch of earth, so parched and stifled with noxious growths, into a flourishing garden. He set to work with a right good will.

First he weeded the ground and then burned all the grass of the garden.

Then he ploughed up the earth with a goad, and planted chick-peas, kidney-beans and potatoes indiscriminately, without troubling to find out whether it was the proper time for sowing. Then he spent hour after hour drawing water from an exceedingly deep well that was situated in the middle of the garden; and as the rope scraped his skin, and, moreover, the soil would be dry within a half hour of watering, he contrived a sort of winch with the aid of which it took him half an hour to draw a bucket of water.

After they had been there a fortnight, the baroness engaged a servant, and when the house was thoroughly cleaned, she went off to Madrid, took Kate from school, and brought her to Cogolludo.

Kate, being of a practical turn of mind, filled several flower-pots with earth and planted various flowers in them.

“Why do you do that?” asked Manuel, “since the whole place will be covered with blossoms in a short time?”

“I want to have my own,” answered the girl.

A month passed, and despite Manuel’s exertions, not a seed sown by him showed any signs of sprouting. Only a few geraniums and some garlic planted by the servant grew admirably, despite the dryness.

Kate’s pots likewise prospered; during the height of the day’s heat she would take them indoors and water them. Manuel, beholding the ignominious failure of his horticultural efforts, devoted himself energetically to the extermination of the wasps, who took shelter in large honeycombs of cells symmetrically arranged, hidden in the interstices of the tiles.

He waged a war to the death against the wasps, but could not conquer them; it seemed that they had conceived a hatred for him; they launched such furious attacks against him that most of the time he had to beat a retreat, and was exposed to the danger of falling from the roof riddled with stings.

Kate’s diversions were of a less strenuous, more pacific nature. She had arranged her room in perfect order. She knew how to beautify everything. With the bed covered by a white quilt and hidden by curtains, the flower-pots on the window ledge already showing signs of sprouting, her wardrobe, and the chromographs on the blue walls, her bedchamber assumed an aspect of charming grace.

Then she was an affable, even-tempered lass.

She had found a wounded cat in the fields, which some urchins had been chasing with stones. She picked it up, at the risk of being scratched, took care of it, and nursed it back to health. Now the cat followed her wherever she went and would stay only with her.

Manuel obeyed La Nena blindly, and felt, moreover, an intense satisfaction in this obedience. He looked upon her as a paragon of perfection, yet despite this, not even in his innermost self, did it ever occur to him to fall in love with her. Perhaps he considered her too good for him, too beautiful. Manuel experienced the paradoxical tendency of all imaginative men who believe that they love perfection and then fall in love with imperfection.

The summer went by pleasantly. The chalky old fellow came twice to Cogolludo, and was seemingly content. At the end of August, however, the pesetas that the baroness regularly received did not put in their appearance.

She wrote several times to Don Sergio, pleading again the persecution of which she was the victim, for in this wise she satisfied both her vanity and the self-conceit of “old Cromwell.” But Don Sergio did not fall into the trap.

There could be no doubt about it; Mingote had informed. For a while the baroness bided her time, obtaining money on one pretext or another, piling up debts. One day, toward the beginning of autumn, the house agent appeared, requesting her to vacate the premises, as they had not paid the rent in Madrid. The baroness broke into insults, and tore to pieces the character of Don Sergio; the guard, however, said that his orders were not to permit the removal of the furniture before he was paid the rent. The baroness was overwhelmed to think that her daughter would learn of her wicked life; she calculated the value of the furniture, which even in Madrid, with the forced sale of some and the pawning of other pieces, had been reduced to those articles which were strictly indispensable, and made up her mind to leave them behind and flee from Cogolludo.

One afternoon when they left the village for a stroll, the baroness explained the situation to Kate, who received the news in utter confusion.

“Shall we go to Madrid?” she concluded.

“Let’s go,” said Kate.

“This very moment?”

“This very moment.”

“It’s cold. It’s beginning to drizzle.”

The railway station was in a nearby village. Manuel knew the way. The three of them strode along amid low hillocks; they met nobody. Kate was still somewhat upset.

“We must look pretty queer,” said the baroness.

About an hour and a half after having left the village, suddenly, around a bend in the road, they sighted the semaphore of the railroad,—a white disc that looked like a gaunt spectre. A barely perceptible breeze was blowing. Soon they heard from a distance the shrill whistle of the locomotive; then came gleams of the red and white lanterns on the engine, which grew rapidly in the darkness; the earth trembled, the cars thundered by with an infernal roar, a puff of white smoke rolled up, shot through with luminous incandescencies, and fell in a shower of sparks to the ground. The train sped on, leaving two lanterns, one red and the other green, dancing in the gloom of the night, until they, too, were engulfed in the darkness. By the time they entered the station the three were exhausted. They waited several hours, and on the morning of the following day they arrived in Madrid.

The baroness was worried. They went to a lodging-house; they were asked whether they had any luggage; the baroness answered no, and could find no pretext or explanation. They were told that they could not be accommodated without luggage, unless they paid in advance, and the baroness left in shame. Thence they proceeded to the house of a friend, but she had moved away. Neither did they know Horacio’s whereabouts. The baroness was compelled to pawn Kate’s watch and the trio took rooms in a third-class hotel.

On the fourth day their money gave out. The baroness had lost her self-composure, and her features betrayed her weariness and discouragement.

She wrote a humble letter to her brother-in-law, begging hospitality for herself and daughter. The answer was slow in coming. The baroness hid from Kate, to cry her fill.

The proprietress of the hotel presented their account; the baroness entreated her to wait a few days until a certain letter should come, but the landlady, who would not have been perturbed by the request made in some other form, imagined from the tones employed by the baroness that deception was afoot, so she answered that she would not wait, and that, if on the next day she were not paid, she would notify the police.

Kate, seeing that her mother was more troubled than ever, asked her what was the matter. The baroness explained the dire straits in which they found themselves.

“I’m going to see the ambassador of my country,” declared Kate with determination.

“You, alone? I’ll go with you.”

“No, let Manuel accompany me.”

The two went off to the Embassy; they entered through a wide doorway. Kate handed her card to an attendant and was admitted at once. Manuel, seated on a bench, waited for fifteen minutes. At the end of this time the maiden came out in company of a venerable old man.

He saw her to the door and spoke to a uniformed lackey.

The lackey opened the door of a carriage that stood opposite the entrance and remained standing with his hat in his hand.

Kate bade the old gentleman good-bye. Then she said to Manuel:

“Come along.”

She stepped into the carriage, followed by the astounded Manuel.

“Everything’s all arranged,” said the girl to Manuel. “The ambassador has telephoned to the hotel requesting them to send the bill to the Embassy.”

Manuel noticed on this occasion, and in later years more than once corroborated the observation, that women accustomed from childhood to submit and to conceal their desires, possess, when their hidden energies are brought into play, a most extraordinary power.

The baroness received the news in astonishment and in an access of tenderness showered kisses upon Kate, weeping bitterly as she did so.

Some days later there came an answer from the baroness’s brother-in-law, together with a check covering the expenses of the journey.

Despite what the baroness had promised Manuel, he knew that he would not be taken along. It was natural. The baroness bought some clothes for La Nena and herself.

One autumn afternoon mother and daughter departed. Manuel accompanied them to the station.

The baroness was deeply depressed to think of leaving Madrid; La Nena was, as always, apparently serene.

During the ride none of the three spoke a word.

They stepped out of the carriage into the waiting-room; there was a trunk to be registered; Manuel saw to it. Then they went to the platform and took seats in a second-class coach. Roberto, pale, was pacing up and down the platform.

The baroness promised the boy that they would return.

The station bell rang. Manuel stepped into the coach.

“Better be getting off,” said the baroness. “The train is about to start.”

Manuel offered his hand timidly to La Nena.

“Embrace her,” said her mother.

Manuel scarcely dared to put his arms around the maiden’s waist. The baroness kissed him upon both cheeks.

“Good-bye, Manuel,” she said, wiping a tear.

The train started; La Nena waved her hand from the window; one car after another rumbled along the tracks; the locomotive gathered speed. Manuel grew heavy hearted. On sped the train, whistling through the fields, as Manuel raised his hands to his eyes and felt that he was weeping.

Roberto clutched his arm.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Is that you?” asked Manuel.

“Yes.”

“They were very good to me,” commented Manuel, sadly.