"He can't come till twelve," replied Rivera. "From ten till twelve he is always engaged in plotting against institutions in the Café del Siglo."
"I thought that he was in Levante."
"No; he goes there last from two till three."
The first speaker was the very same Señor Marroquín of perpetual memory, Miguel's professor in the Colegio de la Merced, a born enemy of the Supreme Creator and a man as hirsute as a biped can possibly be. This was how he happened to be here:—
One day when Miguel was just finishing his breakfast, word was brought to him that a gentleman was waiting to see him in the library. This gentleman was Marroquín, who in his appearance resembled a beggar; he was so poor, dirty, and disreputable. When he saw his old pupil, he was deeply moved, strange as it may appear, and then told him with genuine eloquence that he had not a shilling, and that he and his children were starving to death, and at the end he begged him to find a place for him on the staff of La Independencia.
"I am not the owner of the journal, my dear Marroquín. The only thing that I can do for you is to give you a letter to General Count de Ríos."
He gave him the letter, and Marroquín presented himself with it at the general's house; but he had the ill fortune to go at a most inopportune moment when the general was raging up and down through the corridors of his house, like one possessed, and calling up the repertoire of objurgations for which he had been so distinguished when he was a sergeant.
The reason was that one of his little ones had drunk up a bottle of ink, under the impression that it was Valdepeñas. Whether oaths and invectives have any decisive influence upon events or not, we are unable to state; but the general used them with as much faith as though they had been a powerful antidote.
The victim was leaning his poor little head against the partition, shedding a copious flood of tears.
"What have you brought?" roared the count, casting a wrathful look upon Marroquín.