"But there is a servant who devotes himself to water-colour painting every afternoon."
"I will give him two dollars to go and paint elsewhere."
"And a lady opposite who spends all her time in looking out of her window to see what is done or left undone in my rooms."
"She will have a real treat! I will shut the Venetians.—I say, Manolito, do you mean to pass the whole of your youth stretched on that divan without uttering a word?"
Davalos was in fact lying at full length in a gloomy and dejected manner without even lifting his head to notice his friend's sallies. But on hearing his name, he moved, surprised and annoyed.
"If you were in my place you would feel little inclined for jesting, Rafael," said he with a sigh.
It should be said that the young Marquis, who had never had a very brilliant intelligence, had now for some time been suffering from a distinct cloud on his brain. He was slightly cracked, as it is vulgarly termed. His friends were aware that this depression was all the result of his rupture with Amparo, the woman who had since thrown herself on the Duke's protection. She had, in a very short space, consumed his fortune, but he still was desperately in love with her. They treated him with a certain protecting kindness that was half satirical; but they abstained from banter about his lady-love, unless occasionally by some covert allusions, because whenever they touched on the subject, Manolo was liable to attacks of fury resembling madness. He was hardly more than thirty, but already bald, with a yellow skin, pale lips, and dulled eyes. His sister-in-law had taken charge of his four little children. He lived in an hotel on a pension allowed him by an old aunt whose heir he was supposed to be; on the strength of this prospect some money-lenders were willing to keep him going.
"If I were in your shoes, Manolito, do you know what I would do? I would marry that aunt."
The audience laughed, for Manolo's aunt was a woman of eighty.
"Well, well," said he, in a piteous voice, "you know very well that you have not had to spend the morning fighting with unconscionable usurers only to end by giving in—in the most shameful way," he added in an undertone.