The girl made her usual scornful pout and murmured under her breath:

"As if I should think of doing such a thing!"

"Come, Venturita, what are you muttering there? Come, before I get angry."

"Do, do, Venturita; don't behave like that," implored all the needlewomen in low tones.

"Don't bother me. Will you leave me in peace?" she retorted, also in a low tone, albeit an angry one.

"Won't you do as I tell you?" now demanded Don Rosendo, with increased severity, "won't you?" But the girl sat silent and motionless.

"Then leave the room at once; get out of my sight!" stormed the father.

Venturita rose from her seat and, stiff and sullen, she made her way through the party, and left the room, slamming the door heavily behind her. Don Rosendo, after standing a moment motionless with his eyes on the door by which his daughter had made her exit, turned round and said:

"I am sorry to have to be so severe with my children, but sometimes there is no help for it."

The fierce expression soon faded from Belinchon's fine face, and was superseded by his habitual look of thoughtful abstraction.

"Gonzalo, if it is not troubling you, I wish you would come with me into my study," he said, turning to his future son-in-law.

The young man, who had several times started and turned pale during the last scene, was now filled with dismay, for he feared that the summons betokened nothing less than that Don Rosendo, having a suspicion of the inconstancy of his feelings, was now about to call him to account. So, with his head bent and very anxious, he followed Belinchon into the study, which was a s.p.a.cious apartment, furnished with the luxury befitting a rich merchant--a ma.s.sive table and cabinets of mahogany, loaded with parcels of books and papers, a velvet carpet, sofas upholstered with brocade, and a colossal silver inkstand. A quarter of the room was filled with a heap of little packets, wrapped in paper of various colors, which would puzzle anybody who entered it for the first time. Not so Gonzalo, or any intimate friend of the house. Those packages were full of toothpicks!

"How so?" the reader will ask.

Don Rosendo Belinchon, a cod merchant of such renown, a dealer in toothpicks as well?

No, Don Rosendo did not deal in toothpicks; he made them. And this not from any speculative motive, which would have been beneath him, but from a purely disinterested love of the thing. He had evinced the taste in early youth, but the a.s.siduous occupations of his trade and the vicissitudes of his life had only hitherto permitted him to indulge his pa.s.sion in a desultory way in leisure hours. But from the time he could leave his office to a few faithful underlings he gave himself up heart and soul to such a simple and useful amus.e.m.e.nt. In the morning at Graell's shop, in the afternoon at the saloon, in the evening at home, or at Don Pedro Miranda's, he was always working. His servant spent a great part of the day in preparing perfectly equal pieces of dry wood, from which his dexterous hand produced the queen of toothpicks.

And as he never rested from his work, not even on holidays, the production was so excessive that there were not enough purchasers in town, and when the heap reached from the table to the ceiling he was obliged to despatch packets of them to his friends in the capital.

Thanks to the n.o.ble efforts of this clever representative of his trade, we can say with pride that Sarrio attained the level of the great capitals in this interesting branch of civilization, and that no other Spanish or foreign town could compete with it, for the house of every rich man, as well as every poor one, boasted a well-cut toothpick, irrefutable testimony of the cultured refinement of its inhabitants.

Don Rosendo signed to the young man to be seated on the sofa, which he did in visible agitation. Then the merchant proceeded to take a chair with an air of mystery, and placing himself opposite the youth, he gave him a dig in the ribs and jauntily said with a smile:

"Well, Gonzalito, and what do you think of this question of the slaughter-house?"

"The slaughter-house?" asked the young man, opening his eyes wide with surprise.

"Yes, the new slaughter-house; do you think it ought to be put on the Es...o...b..era, or on the Plaza de las Meanas, or at the back of Don Rudesindo's houses?"

Gonzalo seemed to see heaven open and, smiling with pleasure, he replied:

"I think it would be very well on the Plaza de las Meanas. It is very open--very airy there."

Then seeing that a frown gathered on his future father-in-law's forehead, and that the smile suddenly left his face, he added stammeringly:

"I don't think it would be bad at the Es...o...b..era either."

"Much better, Gonzalo; infinitely better."

"Maybe, maybe."

"But it _must_ be, and I tell you plainly that to have it on the Plaza de las Meanas (this, mind you, quite between you and me) is an act of utter madness; an act of ut-ter madness," he repeated, with additional stress on each syllable.

"And this opinion of mine," he added, "is not, as you imagine, a thing of yesterday, or of to-day, but of all my life. From the time that I was capable of understanding anything I knew that the slaughter-house ought not to be where it is; in a word, that it ought to be moved. Whither? An internal voice always replied: 'To the Es...o...b..era.' Before I was able to give any scientific reason I was as convinced as I am now that it was there that it ought to be, and nowhere else. Now that the discussion of the problem is at hand, I feel obliged to support this opinion, to communicate my idea to the public, and to give it the result of my meditations. If you have nothing to do, I will now read you the letter that I am sending to the 'Progress of Lancia' with this end in view."

And in effect, without waiting for Gonzalo to reply, he turned to the table, took up some sheets of paper that were upon it, put on his spectacles, and, approaching the window, he commenced reading the letter in a voice which betrayed his emotion.

The letter was written on business paper, large and ruled. All the letters that for years past he had sent to the "Progress of Lancia" and to other periodicals had been written on the same sort of paper, on both sides. He did not then know that the paper ought only to be written on one side for the press, but he soon acquired that valuable knowledge, as we shall see.

Don Rosendo Belinchon evinced a taste for writing communications to the press almost simultaneously with that for toothpicks; that is to say, it dated from his early years.

A great advocate of human progress, of reform, of all kinds of discussion and instruction, it was natural that the press should inspire him with respect and enthusiasm. Newspapers had always been an indispensable element of his existence. He subscribed to many, both national and foreign, because, being educated for commerce, he was well versed in French and English, and he never missed devoting a couple of hours to reading the journals even on the busiest days. These hours had increased during later years, at the expense of the codfish business.

The delight that our hero felt in the morning, after taking his chocolate, in perusing the leading articles of the "Pabellon Nacional,"

the events of the "Politica," and the light news of the "Figaro," was so intense that the brightness of his face pervaded the atmosphere.

Like all men of wide and lofty views, he was not exclusive in his press proclivities. He liked a paper as a paper, a pleasant medium of the progress of human reason, or, as he better expressed it, as a "lofty manifestation of public opinion."

The opinions that each supported were secondary matters. He subscribed to papers of every opinion, and enjoyed them all equally. If he had any particular predilection, it was for venomous articles and paragraphs, for their way of saying one thing and conveying another, of twisting phrases in such a manner that an apparently innocent clause was an envenomed shaft, filled Don Rosendo with such delight that he went nearly mad with joy. Sometimes on reading in "La Espana" a paragraph in this style:

"Yesterday the circular of the Senor President of the Supreme Court to his subordinates appeared at last. We congratulate General O'Donnell, the president of the Liberal party, and Senor Negrete and the Democratic Government party on the colossal work that they have consummated in a few moments of lucidity," he would exclaim, waving the paper in his hand:

"What spite, Caracoles; what spite!"

This liking, or, rather, pa.s.sion for the press, was not fruitless, as we have said. Even in his youth he had sent two letters to a weekly paper published in Lancia, called "Autumn," describing the annual festivities that took place in Sarrio in the month of September. These letters were read with profit and no little pleasure in the town, which encouraged him to write three more the following year, giving an account of the marvelous number of rockets that were sent off in Sarrio on the 13th, 14th, and 15th of the month, the beautiful illumination of the 16th, and the magnificent ball given at the Lyceum on the night of the 17th.

After tasting the sweets of publicity, Don Rosendo could not do less than indulge in them from time to time.

The least pretext sufficed for him to send a letter or a communication to the papers.

Sometimes he signed them with his name, at other times with some pretty pseudonym or anagram.

If the fisher-folk had a festival in honor of St. Telmo, Don Rosendo immediately wrote his letter to the "Progress of Lancia" or to the "Bee," describing the decorations, the bonfires, the ma.s.s, the procession, etc. If a banquet were given in the new school buildings on their inauguration, three or four days later the Lancian paper contained a letter publishing the speeches and improvised sonnets. If a bricklayer fell from a scaffolding, there was a communication from Don Rosendo asking for better protection for bricklayers who have to go on scaffoldings. If the son of Don Aquilino sang at a ma.s.s, there would be a letter from Don Rosendo describing the touching ceremony and praising the clear, musical voice and the serene appearance of the young priest.

If the tides were high and strong and broke away some stones from the end of the pier, a letter; if the boats from Bilbao declined to take on board the pilots of Sarrio, a communication; if a harvest of maize were lost by the drought, a letter; if the prevailing winds were from the northeast, a letter.

In short, nothing happened on terra firma or in the atmosphere of the town worthy of mention without its being tackled by the clever, flowing pen of our merchant. How much work will the future historians of Sarrio be saved by this valuable material, acc.u.mulated by one of its most enlightened sons!

With advancing years Don Rosendo Belinchon's letters a.s.sumed a character less romantic, we won't say frivolous (for it would not be either correct or respectful to apply such a term to that estimable gentleman); but it was noticeable that the subject-matter was not so much the junketings and recreations of the townsfolk, but something that would tend, directly or indirectly, to forward their moral and material interests. The trades, the schools, the salvage from shipwrecks, the building of a church or a prison, were the matters that he now most frequently treated to his own glory and to that of his birthplace.

One of them, of vital interest for Sarrio, as he maintained, was the slaughter-house. He had not hitherto approached this question, because he knew that his opinion was at variance with that of a large number of his fellow-townsmen. But he considered "that the time had now come to express it without any perambulation or circ.u.mlocution."

The letter he now read, the first he had written on the subject, was addressed to the "Progress of Lancia," and it ran thus:

"THE SENOR DIRECTOR OF THE 'PROGRESS OF LANCIA.'

"_Dear_ Sir--The attention now accorded to natural physical science, and especially to the science of hygiene, as the health of places as well as people depends upon it, in view of its great practical utility, the timidity of those who, influenced by an education as erroneous as it was deficient, condemned the study of these great problems, being c.u.mbered with antiquated, dull ideas, is now happily vanishing under the powerful movement of the nineteenth century, rightly called the century of enlightenment."