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For many years past, ever since he had been given "la alternativa"[1] in the Bull-ring of Madrid, he had always lodged at that same hotel in the Calle de Alcala, where the proprietors treated him as one of the family, and waiters, porters, kitchen scullions, and old chambermaids all adored him as the glory of the establishment.
Don Joselito, master of a primary school, verbose and enthusiastic, who presided over the district committee, was a young man of Jewish origin, who brought into political strife all the ardour of the Maccabees, and was proud of his swarthy ugliness, pitted with smallpox, because he thought it made him resemble Danton; El Nacional always listened to him open-mouthed.
The saddler's imagination pictured to himself the great wealth that Gallardo would acquire, and he thought also of the five children he already had and of the rest which would surely follow, for he was a man of unwearied and prolific conjugal fidelity. Who knew if what the espada earned might not eventually be for one of his nephews!...
El Nacional, still anxious about his Master's accident and terrible fall, asked if he was in pain, and whether Doctor Ruiz should be summoned.
Three years before on the morning of Good Friday, when la Macarena was on her way back to her church, this poor sinner, who in point of fact was a very good sort of fellow, after wandering about the streets all night with his friends, had stopped the procession in front of a tavern in the market place. He sang to the Virgin, and then fired by holy enthusiasm broke out into compliments. Ol! the beautiful Macarena! He loved her more than his sweetheart! In order to display his devotion he wished to throw at her feet what he held in his hand, thinking that it was his hat, but unfortunately it was a glass which smashed itself on the Virgin's face.... He was carried off weeping to prison. He did love la Macarena just as if she were his mother! It was all that cursed wine which took men's wits away! He trembled at the thought of the years of jail awaiting him for this disrespect to religion, and he wept so effectually that even those who were most indignant with him ended by pleading in his favour, and everything was settled on his giving a promise to perform some extraordinary penance as a warning to other sinners.
"Where is that man going to?"
The Se?ora Angustias was a strong woman, obese and mustachioed, who feared no man, and compelled respect from other women by her energetic determination, but with her son she was weak and soft-hearted. What could she do?... She had laid violent hands on every part of the boy's body, and broom sticks had been broken with no apparent result. That cursed one, said she, had the hide of a dog. Accustomed out of the house to the tremendous butting of the calves, the cruel tramplings of the cows, to the sticks of the herdsmen and slaughtermen, who thrashed the tauric aspirants without mercy, his mother's blows seemed a natural event, a continuation of his out-door life prolonged into his family life, which he accepted without the slightest intention of amendment, as a fine he had to pay in return for food. So he gnawed the hard bread with starving gluttony, while the maternal blows and maledictions rained on his shoulders.
"Oh! You fine fellow!" He thought the espada looked better than ever.
Then El Nacional would enumerate the sales of the previous day; so many glasses of wine over the counter,[Pg 112] so many bottles of country wine delivered at houses, and the old woman listened with the attention of one used to poverty and who knows the value of money to the very last farthing.
"Go out, everybody!"
He seized a spoon, took a large piece of bread and looked round at the others, to make sure, with his rural courtesy, if the proper time for beginning had arrived.
If you could only have seen him!... But probably[Pg 7] you and those of your day were still at the breast or were not yet born.
[2] "Good shadow"lucky.