THE tavern was a small one; it had a red counter covered with zinc, a door at one side through which one passed into a large cellar lit by two smoky oil lamps and several black lanterns. That night there was a great concourse and influx of people in the place. Quentin and Springer entered, traversed the outer room, then crossed the cellar, where there were several occupied tables, and sat down at a small one in the light of an oil lamp.
“This is our table,” said Quentin.
He clapped his hands, and the landlord, a man by the name of El Pullí, appeared; he ordered some crabs, a ration of fried fish, and a bottle of Montilla. Then he said:
“Bring me the bill for everything I owe.”
El Pullí returned presently with the crabs, the fried fish, and the wine, and, upon a dish; a paper upon which several letters and figures had been scrawled in blue ink.
Quentin took the paper, pulled out several bills from his vest pocket, and proceeded to toss them upon the plate.
“Is that right?” he asked of El Pullí.
“It must be right if you counted it,” replied the man.
“Here’s something for the boy,” added Quentin, putting a dollar upon the table.
“I have two boys, Don Quentin,” answered El Pullí slyly.
“Well, then, here’s something for the other one.”
That clinking of silver produced an extraordinary effect in the tavern. Every one looked at Quentin, who, pretending not to notice the fact, began to eat and to carry on an animated conversation with his friend.
At this point two men approached the table: one was tall, smiling, some thirty years old, toothless, with a black beard and reddish, blood-shot eyes; the other was short, blond, timid-and insignificant-looking.
Quentin greeted them with a slight nod, and indicated that they should be seated.
“Here,” said Quentin to Springer, indicating the man with the beard, “you have a thoroughgoing poet; the only bad thing about him is his name: he is called Cornejo. He is Corneille translated into Cordovese. But sit down, gentlemen, and order what you like; then we shall talk.”
The two men seated themselves.
The poet looked something like a carp, with his dull, protruding eyes. He wore very short trousers, checked yellow and black, and carried a cane so worn by use that he had to stretch out his arm to touch the ground with it. From what Quentin said, Cornejo was a fantastic individual. He had on a blue, threadbare coat which he called his “black suit,” and a ragged overcoat which he called his “surtout.” He always had patches in his trousers; sometimes these were made of cloth, and sometimes of rawhide; he lived in the perpetual combination of a zealous appetite and an empty stomach; he fed only upon alcohol and vanity; hence his poetical compositions were so ethereal that they were windy, rather than wingèd verse.
Once when he was walking with a comrade who was also a poet and a ragamuffin, he said, pointing to some grand ladies in a carriage:
“My lad, they are looking at us with a contempt that is ... inexplicable.”
The fellow went through life wandering from tavern to tavern, reciting verses of Espronceda and Zorilla; sometimes between the madrigals and romances, he composed some terrible poems of his own in which he appeared as a ferocious person who cared for no liquid but blood, for no perfume but the odour of graveyards, and for no skies but tempestuous ones.
Cornejo was very popular among the workingmen, and he knew all the toughs and ruffians who swarmed in the taverns. The short, blond chap who accompanied him was nervous.
“This gentleman,” said the poet to Quentin, pointing to the little fellow, “is the printer. If you can give him something....”
“Very well. How much do I owe you?” asked Quentin.
“Here is the invoice,” said the little man humbly.
“Don’t bring any invoices to me! How much is it?”
“Forty dollars.”
“Good. That’s all right.”
Quentin filled a glass of wine, and the printer looked at him rather anxiously.
“How much do you need to assure the publication of the paper for three months?”
The printer took out paper and pencil and rapidly made some figures.
“Two hundred dollars,” said he.
“Good,” replied Quentin, and he took some bills from his pocket-book and put them upon the table. “Here are the two hundred dollars. I’ll pay you the forty that I owe you when I can.”
“That’s all right,” said the printer, picking up the money without daring to count it. “Would you like me to give you a receipt?”
“I—What for?”
The printer rose, bowed ceremoniously, and went out.
“How about you, Cornejo?” murmured Quentin. “Do you need some?”
“Throw me ten or twelve dollars.”
“Here are twenty; but you’ve got to get to work. If you don’t, I’ll kick you out.”
“Don’t you worry.” The poet stuck the bill carelessly into his pocket, and began to listen to the conversation of the persons at the next table. One of these was a man with a huge beard whom they called El Sardino; the other was a charcoal-burner with a grimy face called El Manano.
“Listen to this conversation,” said the poet. “It’s worth it.”
“But what does that man give you?” El Manano was saying to El Sardino, making strange grimaces with his sooty face, and waving his arms.
“He gives me nothing,” replied the other very seriously, “but he reports me.”
“He reports you! You must be easy!”
“It’s true.”
“But what good has it done you to know him?”
“It’s done me a lot of good, and I am grateful.”
“That’s almost like scratching a place to lie down in, comrade,” said El Manano meaningly.
“Well, I’m like that,” replied El Sardino. “Of course nothing gets ahead of me, and I always take my hat off so they can see the way my hair is parted.”
“You’ve told me that before.”
“I don’t understand a word of what they are saying,” said the Swiss with a smile.
“Nor do they understand each other,” remarked Quentin.
“That’s their way of talking,” said the poet.
“And who are those fellows?” asked Springer.
“El Sardino is an itinerant pedlar,” replied Cornejo. “He makes sling-shots for the children out of branches of rose-bay, and whistles out of maiden-hair ferns; the kind that have little seeds in them to make them trill. El Manano is a charcoal-burner.”
“Of whom were they speaking?”
“Probably of Pacheco.”
“The bandit?” asked Springer.
Cornejo fell silent; glanced at Quentin, and then, swallowing, murmured:
“Don’t say it so loud; he has many friends here.”
“That’s what we are,” replied Quentin.
The poet could not have been pleased by this turn of the conversation, for without saying another word, he addressed the charcoal-burner:
“Hello, Manano!” he cried. “It looks as if we’d caught it now, eh? Well, look out they don’t take you to La Higuerilla!”
“Me!—to La Higuerilla?” exclaimed the drunkard; “nobody can do that!”
“Don’t you want to go there any more?”
“No.”
“Why not? You used to be glad to go.”
“Because they used to treat a fellow right; but now, as you’ve said in poetry, they don’t give you anything but water, a blow or two with a stick now and then, and that stuff that smells so bad ... pneumonia.”
The poet smiled at this testimony of his popularity.
El Sardino and El Manano had resumed their same parabolic manner of speech, when there came humming into the tavern a small, straight man with a short, black moustache that looked as if it were painted on his lip, a broad-brimmed hat pulled over his eyes, a huge watch chain across his vest, and a knotted and twisted stick.
When Springer caught sight of this ludicrous individual, he smiled mockingly, and the poet said:
“Here’s Carrahola.”
“What a funny chap!”
“He’s a bully,” replied Cornejo.
“Bah!” exclaimed Quentin, “he’s a poor fellow, who because he is so small, has the fad of carrying everything extra large: his stick, his sombrero, his cigar-case.”
And indeed, as if to demonstrate this, Carrahola pulled a silver watch, as white and as large as a stew-pan, from his vest pocket, and after ascertaining the time, asked the landlord:
“Has Señor José come yet?”
“No, Señor.”
“But is he coming?”
“I can’t tell you; I think so.”
Carrahola went up to the table at which Quentin, Springer, and Cornejo were sitting, drew up a chair, and sat down without greeting them.
“This is a great night for finding lone jackasses, Carrahola,” said the poet, turning to the little man.
The fellow turned his head as if he had heard the voice from the other side of the room, and paid no attention. Carrahola doubtless considered himself a great bully; he noted the expectancy in the tavern, so he seized Quentin’s glass, held it up to the light, and emptied it with one swallow. Quentin took the glass, and, without saying a word, took careful aim, and tossed it through an open window. Then, clapping his hands, he said to El Pullí who came toward him:
“A glass; and kindly notify this person,” and he pointed to Carrahola, “that he is in the way here.”
“Move on,” said the innkeeper; “this table is occupied.”
Carrahola pretended not to understand; he took a plug of tobacco and a knife from his coat, and began to scrape tobacco; then he suddenly put the instrument upon the table.
“What do you do with that?” inquired Quentin, pointing to the blade with his finger. “Flourish it?”
Carrahola rose tragically from the table, put his knife away slowly, seized his enormous knotted stick, insinuated himself into his broad hat, gave a little pull to the lapels of his coat, and said dryly and contemptuously:
“Some one is talking in here who would not dare to speak thus in the street.”
This said, he spat upon the floor, wiped away the spittle by rubbing it with the sole of his boot, and stood looking over his shoulder.
“And what does that mean?” asked Quentin.
“That means, that if you are a man, we’ll have two glasses now, and then go and cut each other’s hearts out.”
Without replying Quentin stood up, seized Carrahola by the neck of his coat, lifted him like a puppet, and let him fall upon the soles of his boots, which struck the floor with a ludicrous sound. Everybody burst out laughing. Carrahola charged furiously at Quentin with lowered head; but the latter with the easy movement of a boxer, threw him over his hip into the air; then he took him in his two strong hands, pushed him up to the window, and watch, knife, broad-brimmed hat and all, tossed him into the street.
“You’ll have to learn how to treat people politely,” said Quentin after the operation was over.
“What a lad!” exclaimed El Manano. “He dropped him in the box like a letter!”
Murmurs of admiration were heard all over the tavern. Then a boy, or a small man (one could not determine his age easily), with reddish hair and a very freckled face, a mutilated calañés, and a twill coat, came hopping toward Quentin.
“Good evening,” he said. “El Garroso, that carter over there, has some friends who say that if he ‘tried wrists’ with you, he could beat you. We say he couldn’t do it. Would you like to try wrists with him, Don Quentin?”
“No, not now, thanks.”
“Excuse me if I was wrong to ask you; but some are betting on you and others on him.”
“Whom did you bet on?”
“On you.”
“Good, then let’s go over.”
“El Rano is always making bets,” said Cornejo.
“Is his name El Rano?”
“Haven’t you noticed his face?”
The little man turned around, and Springer was forced to suppress a smile. Sure enough, he looked exactly like a frog, with his protruding, bulgy, stupid-looking eyes, his broad face, bottle-shaped nose, and mouth that spread from ear to ear.
“Where is El Garroso?” asked Quentin.
“At that table over there.”
A man arose, smiling; he was round shouldered, with bow legs and arms, a square head, a bull neck, and a swelling something like a coxcomb in the middle of his forehead.
El Rano, El Garibaldino, and El Animero placed a table and two chairs in the middle of the tavern. El Garroso sat down, followed directly by Quentin.
“Well, as this is not a fighting matter,” said Quentin to El Garroso, “we’ll have two rounds, eh?”
“Sí, Señor.”
They placed their elbows upon the table, clasped hands, and the chairs, the table, and even the bones of the adversaries began to creak.
El Garroso turned red; a vein in his forehead, as large as a finger, looked as if it were about to burst. Quentin was impassive.
“Do you think you are going to lose, Rano?” he said to the little man.
“No, indeed.”
“That’s right. Now you’ll see.” And without making an apparent effort—crack! El Garroso’s arm fell to the table, his knuckles striking the boards forcibly.
Every one was astonished.
“Good, now let’s try it again,” said Quentin.
“No, no. You’re stronger than I am,” murmured El Garroso.
Quentin said that it was all a matter of practice, and was chatting away, when Carrahola, who could not have been hurt by his fall, doubtless lifting himself by his hands, and hoisting himself until his head reached the height of the window through which he had made his exit so brusquely, shouted with a prolongation of the “o”:
“Gallego!”
“I’m going out and beat him up,” said El Pullí. “I’ll show him something pretty fine;” and the man closed the window and barred it with a stick.
Presently Carrahola shouted through the keyhole of the street door:
“Oscurantista!”
At this moment some one knocked at the door, Pullí opened it, and Pacheco and a friend, both wrapped in cloaks, entered, followed by Carrahola.
“The peace of God be with you, gentlemen,” said Pacheco. “Who is it that is entertaining himself by throwing my friends through the window?”
“It was I,” replied Quentin.
“Ah! Is that you? I didn’t see you.”
“Yes, sir; and I’ll throw him out again if he bothers me.”
“If it was you, that’s another matter,” said Pacheco. “I know that you don’t like to stick your nose into other people’s affairs.”
Springer observed with surprise the prestige that Quentin enjoyed among that class of people. Pacheco and his friend, who was a toreador called Bocanegra, sat down. Quentin introduced them to the Swiss, and they all fell into an animated conversation.
Carrahola remained some distance away, in an attitude of suspicion.
“Come, Carrahola,” said Pacheco, “it was your fault.”
“Then excuse me, if I was wrong,” said Carrahola.
“Nothing has happened at all,” said Quentin, holding out his hand. “Take a glass, and let’s be friends.”
Bocanegra, the toreador, said ironically:
“Come now, Carrahola, this isn’t the first beating you ever had.”
“Nor will it be the last,” replied the other very seriously.
Springer watched the people with great curiosity. He was surprised at Pacheco’s courtesy: one could see that he was cultured; a man of natural superiority, neat, and with well-kept hands. The toreador was a strong-looking fellow with bright eyes and white teeth.
“One moment,” said Quentin. “Pacheco, please come here.”
The bandit got up, and the two men went to one end of the table and conversed.
“Have you seen the Count?” asked Quentin.
“Yes.”
“What does he say?”
“That the woman is mad; that he has only been married once, like every one else.”
“All we have to do is to go to the town and get hold of the wedding certificate. Send one of your men.”
“I’ll need money for that, comrade.”
“I have some. I’m going to give you all I have left. If you have time, pay El Cuervo what I owe him.”
“Very well.”
Quentin emptied his pocket upon the table.
“There’s more than enough here,” said the bandit. “You’d better keep some.”
Quentin put away a few bills, and they rejoined the group.
The conversation again turned upon revolutionary ideas, about which Pacheco and Bocanegra were most enthusiastic. The bandit spoke very devotedly of General Prim.
“I don’t think there is a man like him in the world, and you needn’t laugh, comrade,” said Pacheco to Quentin, “you are not as patriotic as I am.”
“Every person admires his own likeness,” replied Quentin coldly.
“Do you think I am like Prim?” asked the bandit.
“No. It is Prim who is like Pacheco.”
“I think I ought to be angry with you....”
Suddenly El Sardino’s voice interrupted the conversation, shouting:
“Look here, leave me alone; you’re making my head hot.”
El Manano, in the midst of the confusion, at that moment doubtless remembered his business of charcoal-burning, for he examined closely his interlocutor’s head, which was huge, and murmured in a thick voice:
“Why, it would take a whole cartload of wood even to soften it a little!”
Everybody laughed when they saw El Sardino’s expression of indignation, and went on talking.
“One can do nothing here,” said Pacheco to Springer. “We talk a lot, but words are as far as we get. We Andalusians are very like the colts from this part of the country: a great deal of hoof with very little sole.”
“Don’t say that, Señor José,” Cornejo ejaculated indignantly.
“I say it because it is true. What do all those men on the committee do? Will you tell me? What good is that Lodge?”
“Even God’s interpreter don’t know that,” said El Manano, who had joined the group in the last stages of alcoholic intoxication. “But here,” and he struck his chest, “is a man, Señor José ... a man among men ... willing to die on a barricade. Sí, Señor ... and whenever you or Don Quentin give the signal, we’ll get after the Oscurantistas.... Long live the Constipation, and death to Isabella II!”
“That will do, that will do. Get out,” said the bandit.
“But I’m always liberal, Señor José ... here, and everywhere else....”
“Let’s go,” said Quentin. “He’ll be giving us a great drubbing.”
They got up, and the innkeeper lighted their way to the street door with a small lamp. They walked together as far as El Gran Capitán; Cornejo, Bocanegra and Pacheco turned in the direction of Los Tejares; Quentin and the Swiss went down the Calle de Gondomar.
“But what do you expect of those people?” Springer asked presently.
“I! I don’t know, my boy; now—to be strong, ... later—we shall see.”
“Do you read Machiavelli?”
“You are an extraordinary man, Quentin.”
“Bah!”
“Really. A type worth studying.”
“Well, look here, if you wish to study me, go to the Café del Recreo some night. There you’ll meet the girl that’s living with me.”
“I shall go.”
They had reached Las Tendillas; it was very late, and the two friends took leave of each other with a warm handshake.
A FEW days later, on a Sunday afternoon, Quentin went out for a horseback ride. Before turning toward the mountain, he drew rein in the Paseo de la Victoria to watch the people as they went by.
His reputation as a gambler, a dare-devil, and a rude and powerful man, made it possible for him to have his little successes with the ladies, and more than one of them looked at him with the long, staring, and penetrating glance of a woman not altogether understood by her husband.
As was customary on fiesta days, the carriages were driven to and fro along the Paseo, and among them rode several horsemen on spirited mounts. In one of his turns, Quentin saw Rafaela and Remedios alone in a carriage. Neither of the two girls noticed his presence, and in order that this should not happen again, Quentin placed himself in such a position that they would have to see him as they came back.
Remedios was the first to recognize him, and she told her sister. Quentin bowed to them very ceremoniously. When they reached the extreme end of the drive, Rafaela must have told her coachman to leave the Paseo. Remedios looked back several times. Quentin rode up to the carriage and entered into conversation with the two sisters. Rafaela was pale and had dark rings under her eyes; she was in the last month of pregnancy; her eyes were sunken and her ears transparent.
Remedios was prettier than ever; she was just reaching that intermediate stage when the child becomes the woman.
“Are you two girls well?” Quentin asked them with real interest.
“I am well,” answered Rafaela a trifle weakly. “Just waiting from day to day ... and you can see for yourself that Remedios is prettier and healthier than ever.”
Remedios burst into one of her silent laughs.
“Yes,” replied Quentin, “one can see that the country is good for Remedios.”
“Don’t you believe it!” exclaimed the child. “I would rather live in our house on the Calle del Sol.”
“They say you have become a terrible person,” said Rafaela. “I believe you write for the papers, ... that you keep bad company....”
“Nothing to it—just gossip.”
“And you don’t go to the house any more, either. You have deserted poor grandfather.”
“That’s true. I’m always thinking about going, but I never do.”
“Well, he asks after you all the time. The poor dear is very ill, and so lonely.... Since we have been in town, we have been to see him every day.”
“Well, I’ll go, too, don’t you worry.”
“Go tomorrow,” said Remedios.
“Very well, tomorrow it is. But did you two leave the Paseo on my account?”
“No,” replied Rafaela, “I don’t like to drive in that line for very long at a time. It makes my head swim. We are on our way home, now. Adiós, Quentin.”
“Adiós!”
Quentin took the mountain road, and trotted his horse as far as the Brillante lunch-room.
The encounter had given rise to a mixture of sadness and irony within him, which seemed as distressing as it did grotesque to him.
“Is there anything of special significance about it?” he asked himself.
No, there was nothing of special significance about it. It was the logical thing. She had married; her husband was young; she was going to have a child. It was the natural course of events; and yet, Quentin wondered at her.
We often see strange birds flying in the heavens. They are like men’s illusions. Sometimes these birds fall, wounded by some hunter, and when one sees them upon the ground with their sad eyes, their white feathers,—they are a surprise to whomsoever contemplates them.... It is because man idealizes all distant objects.
Quentin, dominated by his half-dolorous, half-grotesque impressions, returned slowly to the town.
When he reached the Paseo de la Victoria, night had already fallen. The line of carriages was still filing past. The mountain was wrapped in a mist; the sun was sinking over the distant meadows, its great, red disk hiding itself behind the yellow fields; a bluish hill surmounted by a castle stood out in silhouette against the rosy-tinted horizon.
Few carriages were passing now; above the old wall and gateway of Almodóvar, the yellowish tower of the cathedral showed against the azure sky, which was now beginning to be decorated with stars.
All of the carriages left the Victoria to drive up and down the Paseo del Gran Capitán.
Quentin entered a café.
“I must get out of this city,” he thought. “I ought to go to London.”
Then he remembered the frequent rain, the wooden coachmen in their cabs, the blue mist in the fields near Windsor, and the ships that glided down the Thames in the fog.
He left the café. The carriages continued to pass up and down El Gran Capitán, enveloped in an atmosphere of dust.
Quentin went home. María Lucena was getting ready to go to the theatre.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said.
“Nothing.”
Quentin stretched out upon a sofa and spent hour after hour recalling the fog, the dampness, and the cool atmosphere of England, until he fell asleep.
THE next evening, Quentin, whose nebulous and Anglomaniacal fever had already quieted down, went to sup at the Café del Recreo.
María Lucena, with her mother and a chorus girl friend were waiting for him.
“Well, you’re pretty late,” said María Lucena as she saw him enter the café.
Quentin shrugged his shoulders, sat down and called the waiter.
María Lucena was the daughter of a farm operator near Cordova. She had little voice, but a great deal of grace in her singing and dancing; a strong pair of hips that oscillated with a quivering motion as she walked, a pale, vague-looking face; and a pair of black, shining eyes. María Lucena married a prompter, who after three or four months of wedded life, considered it natural and logical that he should live on his wife; but she broke up the combination by throwing him out of the house.
The girl who accompanied María Lucena in the café was a chorus girl of the type that soon stand out from their sisters and begin to take small parts. She was a small woman, with very lively black eyes, a thin nose, a mouth with a mocking smile that lifted the commissures of her lips upward, and black hair adorned with two red carnations.
The old woman with them was María’s mother; fat, wrinkled, and covered with moles, with a lively but suspicious look in her eyes.
Quentin began to eat supper with the women. His melancholy fit of blues of the day before had left him, but he looked sad for dignity’s sake, and because it was consistent with his character.
María Lucena, who had noticed Quentin’s abstraction, glanced at him from time to time attentively.
“Well, let’s be going,” said María.
The two girls and the old woman arose, as it was time for the entertainment to begin, and Quentin was left alone, distracted by his efforts to convince himself as well as others, that he was very sad.
Then Springer, the Swiss, came in and sat by Quentin’s side.
“What’s the matter?” he said, taking his friend’s funereal look seriously.
“I feel sad today. Yesterday I saw a girl I used to like. The granddaughter of a marquis. She who married Juan de Dios.”
“What then? What happened to you?”
“She looks badly. She won’t last long.”
“The poor little thing!”
In a lugubrious voice Quentin told all about his love affair, heaping on insignificant details, and wearying excuses.
Springer listened to him with a smile. His fine, spiritual countenance changed expression sympathetically with everything his friend said. Then he himself spoke confusedly. Yes, he too had had a romantic love affair, ... a very romantic one, ... with a young lady; but he was only a poor Swiss plebeian.
Any one who heard them would have said that Quentin’s affair had lasted years, and the Swiss’s only days. It was exactly the opposite. Quentin’s fidelity lasted just about two or three months, at the end of which time he began his affair with María Lucena. On the other hand, the Swiss had been faithful for years and years to an impossible love.
As they chatted, Don Gil Sabadía, the archæologist, appeared in the café. After shaking hands with the Swiss and with Quentin, he sat down at their table.
“It’s a long time since I have seen you,” he said to Quentin. “How about it—are we gaining ground?”
“Psh! If I could get out....”
“Don’t pay any attention to him today,” said Springer. “He’s full of spleen.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” asked the archæologist.
“Women.”
“The females in this city are very attractive, comrade; they are good to look at.”
“They seem insignificant to me,” said Quentin.
“Man alive, don’t say that,” exclaimed the Swiss.
“Pale-faced, rings under their eyes, weak, badly nourished....”
“Will you deny their wit, too?” asked Springer.
“Yes,” answered Quentin. “They make a lot of gestures, and have a fantastic manner of speech that is overloaded with imagery. It’s a sort of negro talk. I always notice that when María Lucena tells something, she compares everything, whether material or not, with something material: ‘it’s better than bread,’ or ‘it has less taste than a squash’ ... everything must be materialized; if not, I don’t believe she would understand it.... She is like a child ... like an impertinent child.”
“What a portrait!” exclaimed the Swiss, laughing.
“Then she makes divisions and subdivisions of everything; every object has twenty names. There is a little bottle of cherry brandy in the house—of that cherry brandy that I hold as something sacred; well, sometimes María calls it ‘the parrot,’ sometimes ‘the greenfinch,’ and sometimes, ‘the green bird.’... And that isn’t all. The other day, pointing to the bottle, she called to her mother from her bed: ‘Mother, bring me that what’s-its-name.’... So you see, for that class of people, language is not language—it is nothing.”
“Doesn’t that indicate inventive genius?” asked the Swiss.
“But what do I want of inventive genius, Springer?” exclaimed Quentin loudly. “Why, a woman doesn’t need inventive genius! All she needs is to be pretty and submissive, and nothing else....”
“You are tremendous,” said the Swiss. “So that for you, a woman’s intelligence is of no account?”
“But that isn’t intelligence! That is to intelligence what the movement of those men who go hopping about nodding to one and talking to another, is to real activity. The former is not intelligence nor is the latter activity. The thing is to have a nucleus of big, strong ideas that direct your life.... As the English have.”
“I have an antipathy for the English,” said the Swiss. “As for Andalusia, I believe that if this country had more culture, it would constitute one of the most comprehensive and enthusiastic of peoples. Other Spaniards are constantly bargaining with their appreciation and admiration; the national vice of Spain is envy. Not so with the Andalusians. They are ready to admire anything.”
“It’s a racial weakness,” exclaimed Quentin. “They are all liars.”
“You, who are an Andalusian, must not say that.”
“I? Never. I am a Northerner. From London, Windsor.... Why did I ever come here?”
María Lucena, her little friend, and her mother came in. The Swiss and Don Gil bowed to them.
“You must defend the Andalusians,” said Springer to the actress; “for Quentin is turning them inside out.”
“What’s he here for, then?” inquired María bitterly.
“That’s just what I was saying,” added Quentin. “What did I come to this city for?”
“I know what all this sadness comes from,” said María Lucena in Quentin’s ear.
“Do you? Well, I’m glad.”
“You saw your cousin yesterday; the one with a face that looks as if she had a sour stomach. They say that she can’t yet console herself for her former sweetheart’s leaving her. That’s why she is so sad.”
Quentin shrugged his shoulders.
“Has she had the baby yet, or is it just dropsy?”
Again Quentin did not deign to answer. She indignantly turned her head away.
“So, because you saw her changed into a worm, you came in so sad and downhearted yesterday, eh?”
“Possibly,” said Quentin coldly.
“If you had seen me in the same condition, you would have felt it less.”
“Well, son, it’s time we quit,” replied the actress angrily. “If you think nothing of me, I feel the same way toward you.”
Quentin shrugged his shoulders. The others, seeing the prelude to a tempest, were silent.
María Lucena’s voice grew shrill and disagreeable.
“Do you know what her stepmother, the Countess, said? Well, she said: ‘For all her prudishness, that hussy has married Juan de Dios for his money!’”
“What that female said is not important.”
“All women are just females to you....”
“And it’s true.”
“Well, if you say that about me....”
“Come, come, this is no place for a scene, and don’t shout so.”
“Are you going to strike me? Tell me, are you going to strike me?”
“No; I shall prudently withdraw first,” answered Quentin, rising and getting ready to go.
At this moment Cornejo, the poet, entered the café accompanied by a tall, thin gentleman with an aquiline nose, and a very black and very long beard cut in Moorish fashion. The two came up to the table and sat down.
The poet and the other gentleman had just left the last performance, and were discussing it. Cornejo thought that the musical comedy they had just seen was not altogether bad, the tall man with the black beard insisted that as far as he was concerned it had been superbly wearisome. This gloomy fellow then asserted that for him, life held little promise, and that of all disagreeable and irritating lives, the most irritating and disagreeable was that in a provincial capital; and of all the lives in provincial capitals, the worst was that of Cordova.
In absolute contradiction to Leibnitz and his disciple, Doctor Pangloss, the man with the black beard would have asserted, with veritable conviction, that he lived the worst life in the worst town, in the worst possible of worlds.
“You are right,” said Quentin, with the honest intention of molesting his hearers. “There is nothing so antipathetic as these provincial capitals.”
Don Gil, the archæologist, made a gesture of one who does not wish to heed what he hears, and turning to Springer, said:
“You are like me, are you not? A partisan of the antique.”
“In many ways, yes,” replied the Swiss.
“Theirs was a much better life. How wise were our ancestors! Everything classified, everything in order. In the Calle de la Zapatería were the boot-makers; in the Calle de Librerías, the book-sellers; in the Calle de la Plata, the silversmiths. Each line of business had its street; lawyers, bankers, advocates.... Today, everything is reversed. A tremendous medley! There are scarcely any boot-makers in the Calle de la Zapatería, nor are there any book-sellers in the Calle de Librerías. These ædiles change the name of everything.... The Calle de Mucho Trigo, where there used to be warehouses for wheat, today specializes in making taffy. How absurd, Señor! How absurd! And they call that progress! Nowadays men are endeavouring to wipe out the memory of a whole civilization, of a whole history.”
“What good does that memory do you?” asked the man with the black beard.
“What good does it do me!” cried Don Gil in astonishment.
“Yes, what good does it do you?”
“Merely to show us that we are decadent. Not comparing the Cordova of today with that of the Arabian epoch, but comparing it with that of the eighteenth century, one sees an enormous difference. There were hundreds of looms here then, and factories where they made paper, and buttons, and swords, and leather, and guitars. Today ... nothing. Factories, shops, even mansions have been closed.”
“That may be true; but, Don Gil, why do you want to know these calamities?”
“Why do I want to know them, Escobedo?” cried Don Gil, who was stupefied by the questions of the man with the black beard.
“Yes; I cannot see what good that knowledge does. If Cordova disappears, why, another city will appear. It’s all the same!” Escobedo continued—“Would that we could wipe out history, and with it all the memories that sadden and wither the lives of men and multitudes! One generation should accept from the preceding one that which is useful, that is,—mere knowledge; for example: sugar is refined in this manner, ... potatoes are fried thusly.... Forget the rest. Why should we need them to say: ‘this love you feel, this pain you suffer, this heroic deed you have witnessed, is nothing new at all; five or six thousand other men, exactly like you, felt it, suffered it, and witnessed it.’ What do we gain by that? Will you tell me?”
The archæologist shrugged his shoulders.
“I believe you are right,” said Quentin.
“History, like everything else we have to learn, ages us,” Escobedo proceeded. “Knowledge is the enemy of felicity. This state of peace, of tranquillity, which the Greeks called with relation to the organism, euphoria, and with relation to the soul, ataraxia, cannot be attained in any other way than by ignorance. Thus at the beginning of life, at the age of twenty, when one sees the world superficially and falsely, things appear brilliant and worth coveting. The theatre is relatively fine, the music agreeable, the play amusing; but the evil instinct of learning will make one some day peer from the wings and commence to make discoveries and become disillusioned. One sees that the actresses are ugly....”
“Thanks!” interrupted María Lucena, dryly.
“He doesn’t mean you,” Springer assured her.
“And that besides being ugly, they are sad, and daubed with paint,” continued Escobedo, heedless of the interruption. “The comedians are stupid, dull, coarse; the scenery, seen near to, is badly painted. One sees that all is shabby, rickety.... Women seem angels at first, then one thinks them demons, and little by little one begins to understand that they are females, like mares, and cows.... A little worse, perhaps, on account of the human element in them.”
“That’s true,” agreed Quentin.
“You are very indecent,” said María Lucena, rising with an expression of contempt and anger upon her lips. “Adiós! We’re going.”
The three women left the café.
“And the worst of it is,” continued Escobedo, “that they deceive us miserably. They speak to us of the efficacy of strength; they tell us that we must struggle with will and tenacity, in order to attain triumph; and then we find that there are no struggles, nor triumphs, nor anything; that Fate shuffles our destinies, and that the essence of felicity is in our own natures.”
“You see everything very black,” said the Swiss, smiling.
“I think he sees it all as it is,” replied Quentin.
“Then one would find out,” said Escobedo, “that some of the exalted, beautiful things are not as sublime as the poets say they are—love, for instance; and that other humbler and more modest things, which ought to be profoundly real, are not so at all.
“Friendship! There is no such thing as friendship except when two friends sacrifice themselves for each other. Sincerity! That, too, is impossible. I do not believe that one can be sincere even in solitude. Great and small, illustrious and humble, every individual who gazes into a mirror will always see in the glass the reflection of a pretender.”
“I’m with you,” said Quentin.
“I believe,” declared the Swiss, “that you only look upon the dark side of things.”
“I force myself to see both sides,” responded Escobedo—“the bright as well as the dark. I believe that in every deed, in every man, there is both light and darkness; also that there is almost always one side that is serious and tragic, and another that is mocking and grotesque.”
“And what good does that do you?” asked Don Gil.
“A whole lot. From a funereal and lachrymose individual, I am metamorphosing myself into a jolly misanthrope. By the time I reach old age, I expect to be as jolly as a pair of castanets.”
“Greek philosophy!” said Don Gil contemptuously.
“Señor Sabadía,” replied Escobedo, “you have the right to bother us all with your talk about the signs on the streets of Cordova, and about the customs of our respectable ancestors. Kindly grant us permission to comment upon life in our own fashion.”
“Risum teneatis,” said Don Gil.
“Do you see?” continued Escobedo—“That’s another thing that bothers me. Why does Don Gil have to thrust at us a quotation so common that even the waiters in the café know it?”
The archæologist, not deigning to notice this remark, commenced to recite an ancient Cordovese romance that went: