"I did not want to vex Don Enrique, but I knew that that play could not win."

And having thus vindicated his reputation, he was as pleased as if he had won the game.

The Conde de Onis seemed absent when he came in, and as time went on, he became more and more thoughtful and gloomy; and he played so carelessly that his friends called him to book several times.

"But, Conde, what has come to you?" said Don Pedro, at last, "you seem so very preoccupied."

"Yes, you have actually trumped my trick," added Valero, in distress.

Seeing himself thus taken to task, the count looked as confused as if his companions had read his thoughts.

"Nothing particular is the matter with me," he replied; and taking refuge in an innocent excuse, he added, "I am only suffering from toothache."

"So the poor fellow is ill!" said Valero.

Whereupon they all began pitying him, and asking him particulars about his complaint.

The count being now at his wit's end, answered the questions at random.

"Well, for that pain, Senor Conde," said Saleta, "there is no finer remedy than iron. You will find that it is so. When I was a student I suffered dreadfully from my teeth. I never dared have one drawn, but the landlord I had in Santiago told me the best thing to do was to take a thread, and tie one end to the tooth, and the other to the back of the chair, so that it was gradually drawn out without any pain. I sat myself in a chair, and when the tooth was well tied I got up from the chair and left it hanging behind me. You see I had nothing to do but jump up."

Valero shook his head in despair, and the others looked at him and smiled. But Saleta did not notice, or pretended not to notice it, and continued his story in the quiet matter-of-fact way and the strong Galician accent peculiar to him.

"Afterwards I quite overcame my fear of tooth-drawing. The dentist of Corunna extracted five, one after the other; and when I was judge at Allariz I was in dreadful pain, and as there was no dentist the _Promotor_[G] pulled out three for me with his wife's curling tongs; but do you know this gave me inflammation of the mouth? I was then at Madrid, and Ludovisi, the queen's dentist, burnt my gums with a red-hot iron, and then extracted seven good teeth."

"There went fifteen!" murmured Valero.

"Yes, and I had no further trouble until four years ago, when, whilst I was staying with a friend in a little place in the province of Burgos, the pain came on again. There was no doctor, no surgeon, n.o.body. But a charlatan happened to come along who extracted teeth whilst on horseback; and I was in such distress that I was obliged to have recourse to him, and he took out two with the tail end of a spoon."

"Oh! my man, what humbug!" exclaimed Valero in utter indignation, "and may I ask if you have a tooth left in your head?"

Manin at this moment, with his usual want of manners, opened his mouth wide with a loud guffaw, to the astonishment of the party. Then the great giant turned round in his chair and composed himself to sleep.

"You have never suffered from your teeth, have you, Manin?" asked the Grandee, who could not be a quarter of an hour without appealing to his majordomo.

"What?" asked the fellow without opening his eyes.

"He is like a rock!" said the n.o.bleman with real enthusiasm.

Then Manin sat up a little, and rubbing his eyes with his fists, he said:

"I never had anything worse than a stomach-ache: It came on as I was loading a cart with hay, and it lasted more than a month. I could not touch a morsel of food, and it was just as if I had a fox continually gnawing at my inside. My ribs felt as if they would break in agony, and I leant against the wall, bowed down with pain, and showed my teeth like a serpent. I became as yellow as corn in harvest time. One day the senor priest said to me: 'Manin, you have no heart.' 'I have no heart, senor cure!' said I. 'You don't know me well if you say that, for it is beating here for its very life. I have more heart than what you would think!' 'Then there is nothing to be done, Manin, but to send for the doctor,' said he. 'No, indeed, senor cure; I want none of their drugs and plaisters.' 'Well, if you don't send for him, I shall,' was his answer. At last there was no help for it, and although I was still against it, Don Rafael, the doctor of the mines, arrived. He made me undress as far as my shirt, and then forced me by the shoulders on to a trough. Then he set to giving me blows on the chest with his knuckles, as if he were knocking at a door. He thumped me here, and he thumped me there, and listened with his ear pressed against my body. 'Nay,' I cried. 'Gently! gently my good fellow! Find the truant!' And he went on for half an hour longer, knocking with his knuckles and listening with his ear. At last he got tired of hearing nothing. 'Ah! friend of my soul!' he said, making the sign of the cross, 'you have a liquid heart.

I never saw anything like it in my life!' 'Yes, I knew that before, Don Rafael,' said I."

Having got so far in his relation, Manin stopped suddenly, turned an angry glance on the audience, and muttered under his breath: "And what do these a.s.ses find to laugh at?"

Then, throwing his s.h.a.ggy head back in the armchair, he closed his eyes in great disgust.

The Grandee's guests resumed their game, laughing all the while, but the count became more and more thoughtful and absent.

At last no longer able to control his upset state of nerves, he rose from his seat saying:

"I say, Don Enrique, will you kindly take my place; this pain is so tiresome that I must move about?"

CHAPTER II

THE DISCOVERY

When the count went back to the drawing-room, he found the young people preparing for a _riG.o.don_ (a country dance). The seat at the piano was occupied by one of the daughters of the _Pensioner_; for such was the name given in the town to Don Cristobal Mateo, as he was an old government official, who, after serving many years in the Philippines, had retired some time ago on an income of 30,000 reales.[H]

He had a military bearing and quite a martial aspect, with his white moustache, large rolling eyes, thick eyebrows, and powerful hands.

Nevertheless, there was not a kinder man in the Spanish dominions. His career had been cast in Exchequer offices, and he always expressed strong opinions against the power of the army. He maintained that the blood-suckers of the State were not those employed in civil functions, but the army and navy. The fact was demonstrated by the production of figures and notes on the subject, when he would quite lose himself in bureaucratic divagations. He said that war was caused by the thirst for blood emanating from the superfluous energy of the nation. This was a phrase he had read in the _Boletin de Contribuciones Indirectas_ and appropriated as his own with marked effect. He said soldiers were vagrants, and his aversion to all uniforms and epaulettes was extreme.

When the Corporation of Lancia talked of applying to the government for a regiment to garrison the city, he, as councillor, opposed the measure most resolutely.

What was the good of bringing a lot of spongers into the neighbourhood?

Instead of having the comfort of being at some distance from a regiment, they would have all the disadvantages of harbouring one. Everything would get dear, for the colonels and officers liked to live well and have the best of everything, "after all the hard work they did to earn it," he added, ironically. Then they were all gamblers, and their bad example would contaminate the youths of the place, who never indulged in such licence except on times of holiday making. As they were such an idle lot (Don Cristobal firmly believed that a soldier had nothing to do), one could imagine what a set of rogues they were! In short, the regiment would be a corrupting element and a source of disturbance in the place. So Mateo got his way, not merely because it was his way, but because the Minister of War did not consider it necessary to send soldiers to Lancia, considering the peaceable condition of the inhabitants.

With his income of 30,000 reales, the Pensioner might have lived very comfortably in such a cheap place, if his daughters had not been possessed with the silly fancy of preferring the hats of Madrid to those that were made by the milliner of the Calle de Joaquin, and eight-b.u.t.ton gloves to four-b.u.t.ton ones. Such superior tastes gave rise in the Pensioner's house to many an upset, with all its accompanying tears, hysterics, regrets, disinclination for food, &c. In these terrible conflicts it must be confessed that Don Cristobal did not always comport himself with the dignity, firmness and courage befitting his large moustachios and strongly marked eyebrows. Certainly he was always alone in the fray. Never by any chance did one of his girls side with him, unless it was on a question apart from the domestic arrangement of the house, when some of the daughters joined with papa against the others.

But whenever a problem of economy came to the fore, the Pensioner was sure to have all four children against him. Then Don Cristobal, like an experienced general, tried every means to rout the enemy, or to capitulate under fair terms.

One day the girls were suddenly seized with a fancy for morocco-leather shoes like those of some young lady in the town, who proved to be Fernanda Estrada-Rosa. Then Don Cristobal became pensive and turned the matter over in his mind, with the result of casually mentioning, in the course of conversation at supper, that he had heard at _la Innovadora_ (the best bootmaker's) that morocco boots were considered very dangerous in Lancia on account of the damp; and that Don Nicanor, a local doctor happening to be there at the time, observed that morocco was fatal in such a cold rainy climate; in fact, catarrhs, sometimes developing to galloping consumption, were frequently caught from cold feet. But long before the poor old man finished his diatribe against morocco, his daughters burst in with such ironical laughter, and sarcastic speeches that he was quite crushed.

Another time the girls were bent upon having parasols from Madrid like Amalia's. Don Cristobal held out for some time until finally, having the worst of it, he had to give in. But fertile in resources like Ulysses, he conceived a plan by which the expense would be halved. He went to Amalia, and begged her to lend him her parasol for two or three days, so that one of the local milliners could make him four others exactly similar; and this, at his request, the Senora de Quinones promised to keep a solemn secret. But the poor parasols were not up to the mark, and when they arrived properly packed through the post, and ran the gauntlet of the sharp, anxious eyes of his four daughters, the old man was soon called to task for the poorness of the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and the coa.r.s.eness of the work.

"These parasols were not made at Madrid!" said Micaela in a tone of decision, for she was the sharpest of the four.

"For goodness' sake, don't be so absurd! Where then do they come from?"

returned Don Cristobal with a.s.sumed surprise, whilst he felt the colour mount to his face.

"I don't know, but I am perfectly sure they were not made in Madrid."

And the four nymphs turned them over, felt them with their experienced fingers, and studied and a.n.a.lysed them so minutely, that their father was plunged into a fearful state of suspense. They exchanged significant glances, smiled scornfully, and spoke in whispers. In the meanwhile the Pensioner was a martyr to such an extreme state of nervous anxiety that his very moustachios were affected.

At last the fanciful beings left the purchases in scornful disdain upon the drawing-room chairs, and ran and locked themselves in Jovita's room, where they remained half an hour in secret conclave, whilst Don Cristobal waited in anxious trepidation, as he walked up and down the corridor like a criminal expecting his sentence.

At last the door opened, and the guilty creature stood awaiting the verdict of the judges. But they maintained a cautious reserve, whilst an enigmatical smile wreathed their white lips. Then two of them put on their mantillas and gloves, and darted into the street, to return in a short time to the domestic hearth with blazing eyes, agitated faces, and in a tremor of indignation.

The pen is powerless to portray the subsequent scene in the Pensioner's peaceful dwelling. What cries of rage! what bitter sarcasm! what hysterical laughter! what wringing of hands! what banging of chairs! and what exclamations of woe! And in the midst of such a scene, terrible enough to strike terror into the heart of the most serene, the four parasols, the innocent cause of all the fray, lay on the ground in ignominious ruin.

With the exception of these periodical disturbances which upset the somewhat weak nerves of the Pensioner, his existence was very calm and peaceful, for the numberless, but valuable, little attentions which make life pleasant were never wanting. His daughters were careful about having everything in order, and in its place. His shirts and underclothing were kept in perfect order, his cravats, made from old material, looked as fresh as if straight from the hosiers, his slippers were always ready when he came home, the water put for his foot-bath on Sat.u.r.days, his cigar before going to bed, his gla.s.s of water with lemon for his morning draught, &c., all went on with the sweet and regular mechanism so pleasing to the aged.

It was true that with four daughters it did not represent much trouble, especially if they were not under the dominion of some fancy or desire.

But the sight of some new-fashioned hat, the news of the arrival of a dramatic company, or the announcement of some party at the Casino, would be enough to cause the wildest excitement, in which every other consideration went to the wall, and they were seen flying off to the dressmaker, glove-shop, and perfumer. As these wild freaks of fancy did not harmonise very well with the prosaic details of existence, a slight disorganisation ensued; but Don Cristobal bore these disturbances with composure. After a short time of chaos, order returned, and his life resumed its usual peaceful course. The names of these daughters, in order of age, were as follows: Jovita, Micaela, Socorro, and Emilita. In appearance, they were four insignificant beings, neither beautiful nor ugly, graceful nor ungraceful, young nor old, sad nor vivacious. There was nothing remarkable in any one of them, and yet by the domestic hearth the character of each was quite distinct. Jovita was sentimental and reserved, Michaela was quick tempered, and Emilita was the liveliest of the party. Don Cristobal was greatly exercised on two subjects, one was the reduction of the army and the other was the marriage of his four daughters, or at least two of them. The first project was in a fair way to success, for political opinion inclined in its favour, but as for the other, I am sorry to say that there seemed no likelihood of its realisation. In spite of sacrificing many comforts to dress expenses, and frequenting the promenades, and the Quinones' b.a.l.l.s with a regularity deserving success, the precious gifts of Hymen were not attained.