"I will bring it this afternoon."
He said these words without knowing what he said. Where was he to get it? His Uncle Bernardo had been sent some months before to a private mad-house in Paris. Doña Martina and her family had also gone there to look after him. Enrique was not in the condition to lend it to him. His step-mother was out of town, and she had barely enough to live decently; moreover, it caused him an invincible repugnance to ask back what he had once given. No one of the family was left of whom he could ask it, except his Uncle Manolo.
To him he went.
Uncle Manolo, a grave man and of excellent charity, although he knew about his nephew's ruin, had not realized that it was so complete. He stood with his mouth open at hearing his request. He took out of his drawer the forty duros which he had requested and handed them to him. Miguel, through certain words that escaped him, perceived that he was undergoing a greater sacrifice than any one could have imagined. He suspected, or rather he felt, almost certain, that his uncle was subjected to a shameful servitude. La intendenta apparently had no thought of abandoning the care of her property, and she allowed him each month a certain sum of money for his private wants, which were, as always, large and perfectly indispensable.
Accordingly, Miguel went away greatly disturbed at the interview, and convinced that to borrow money of Uncle Manolo in such circumstances was equivalent to giving him a very great annoyance.
After this episode, convinced that he had no right to expect aid from his relatives, he put forth double zeal in his search for work of any kind. But all his attempts met with the bad luck which pitilessly followed him. In some places there was no vacancy; in others, finding that he was a señorito, and had never been in any counting-house, they distrusted him.
At the editorial offices he was most kindly received; but, as at that time, and even now, the pecuniary affairs of the press were rather upset, willing as the directors would have been, they did not find it easy to give him a position. The most that any of them promised was to give him a place as soon as there was a vacancy. But what he needed now, at this very moment, was some money to buy food, and the days were passing, and it did not come. Without Maximina knowing about it, he pawned a set of gold studs and a ring which had belonged to his father.
Finally the owner of an afternoon paper gave his absolute promise that he should have forty duros a month, as soon as a month was past: during the actual month, on account of certain difficulties in the business office, he could not pay it down. Our hero worked a whole month for nothing. At the beginning of the next, as it was absolutely necessary for him to pay certain sums, Miguel asked him to let him have some money.
Then the owner and manager, adopting that air half complaining and half diplomatic, which all assume who are about to refuse a just but unwelcome claim, painted in the darkest colors the business situation of the daily, the difficulty of collecting certain sums that were due him, the necessity which all editors have of "putting their shoulders to the wheel in order to sustain a young enterprise," etc., etc.
"Friend Huerta," replied Miguel, very much dissatisfied, "hunger has made me altogether too weak to be able to put my shoulder to any new enterprise; on the contrary, I need to be propped up myself so as not to fall."