"If you have nothing to do, sit down for a while."

Alzugaray sat down and examined the new arrivals. One of them was a skinny man, with bushy hair and whiskers; the other was a smooth-shaven party, short, cross-eyed, dressed in copper-coloured cloth edged with broad black braid.

"_The Rebel_ hasn't come?" asked the whiskered one.

"No," replied the bookseller. "It didn't come out this week."

"They must have reported it," said the whiskered one. "Yes, probably."

"Has the doctor been in?" the shaven, little man with the black braid asked in his turn.

"No."

"All right. Let's go see if we can find him in the club. Salutations!"

"Good-bye."

"Who are those rascals?" asked Alzugaray, when they had gone out.

"They are two anarchists that we have here, who accuse me of being a bourgeois... ha... ha.... The shaven one is the son of the landlady of an inn who is called Furibis, and they call him that too. He used to be a Federalist. They call the other one 'Whiskers,' and he came here from Linares, not long ago."

"What do they do?"

"Nothing. They sit in the club chatting, and nowadays the doctor we have here runs with them, Dr. Ortigosa, who is half mad. He will be in soon.

Then you will see a type. He is a very bad-tempered man, and is always looking for an excuse to quarrel. But above all, he is an enemy of religion. He never says Good-bye, but Salutations or Farewell. In the same way, he doesn't say Holy Week, but Clerical Week. His great pleasure is to find a temperament of a fibre like his own; then his eyes flash and he begins to swear. And if he is. .h.i.t, he stands for it."

"He is an anarchist, too?"

"How do I know? He doesn't know himself. Formerly, for four or five months, he got out a weekly paper named _The Protest_, and sometimes he wrote about the ca.n.a.lization of the river, and again about the inhabitants of Mars."

The bookseller and Alzugaray chatted about many other things, and after some while the bookseller said:

"Here is Dr. Ortigosa. He is coming in."

The door opened and a slim individual appeared, worn and sickly, with a black beard and spectacles. His necktie was crooked, his suit dirty, and he had his hat in his hand. He stared impertinently at Alzugaray, cast a glance at a newspaper, and set to shouting and talking ill of everything.

"This is a town full of dumb beasts," he said from time to time, with the energy of exasperation.

Then, supposing Alzugaray to come from Madrid, he started to speak ill of the Madrilenos.

"They are a collection of fools," he said roundly, various times.

"They know nothing, they understand nothing, and still they talk authoritatively about everything."

Alzugaray put up with the downpour as if it had no reference to him, looking over a newspaper; and when the doctor was in the thick of his discourse, Alzugaray got up, shook hands with the bookseller, thanked him, and left the shop.

The doctor looked at him over his gla.s.ses with fury, and began to walk up and down in the bookstore.

Alzugaray went to the hotel, arranging in his memory the data collected.

Caesar was feeling well, and the two of them talked of the bookseller and his friends and of Father Martin Lafuerza.

"I am going to jot down all these points," said Caesar. "It wouldn't be a bad idea for you to go on cultivating the bookseller."

"I am going to."

"Tomorrow, you know," said Caesar. "Grand dinner at Don Calixto's. The practical manoeuvres begin."

"Very good."

V. THE BANQUET

THE GUESTS

The table had been set in that wonderful gallery of the ancient palace of the Dukes of Castro Duro, which looked out over the garden. The early autumn weather was of enchanting softness and sweetness.

Caesar and Alzugaray were very smart and elegant, with creases in their trousers: Caesar dressed in black, with the ceremonious aspect that suits a grave man; Alzugaray in a light suit with a coloured handkerchief in his breast pocket.

"I think we are 'gentlemen' today," said Caesar.

"It seems so to me."

They entered the house and were ushered into the drawing-room. The majority of the guests were already there; the proper introductions and bows took place. Caesar stayed in the group of men, who remained standing, and Alzugaray went over to enter the sphere of Don Calixto's wife and the judge's wife.

The judge, from the first moment, treated Caesar like a man of importance, and began to call him Don Caesar every moment, and to find everything he said, good.

In the ladies' group there was an old priest, a tall, big, deaf man, a great friend of the family, named Don Ramon.

The judge's wife told Alzugaray that this Don Ramon was a simpleton.

He was the pastor of a very rich hermitage nearby, the hermitage of la Vega, and he had spent all the money he had got by an inheritance, in fixing up the church.

The poor man was childlike and sweet. He said various times that he had many cloaks for the Virgin in the sacristy of his church, and that he wished they could be given to poor parishes, because two or three were enough in his.

AMPARITO

While they were talking an automobile horn was heard, and a little later Don Calixto's niece entered the drawing-room.

This was Amparito, the flat-faced girl with black eyes, of whom Caesar had spoken to Alzugaray. Her father accompanied her.

The priest patted the girl's cheeks.

Her father was a clumsy man, red, sunburned, with the face of a contractor or a miner.