"This letter," replied the poor man, offering it with trembling hand.
"Vomit!" roared the general, with flaming eyes.
"What?" asked the professor, timidly.
"Vomit, child, vomit! or I will shake you out of your skin!" bellowed the illustrious chief of Torrelodones, seizing his son by the neck.... "And what does the letter say?"
"It is from Señor Rivera, asking a position on La Independencia for one who admires you."
"Can't you? Then put your fingers in your mouth!.... Señor Rivera knows perfectly well that there is no position vacant; everything is full, and I am tormented to death with applications.... Let me see you stuff your fingers in, you little rascal, or I will do it myself!"
Marroquín acted prudently, by quietly opening the door and slipping out. Afterward Miguel spoke to the general at a more propitious moment and succeeded in getting Marroquín a place on the staff at a monthly salary of five hundred reales.[11]
Among the other editors of La Independencia was an apostate and liberal priest who had let his beard grow long, and used to tell his friends secrets of the confessional when he had been drinking. He was one of Marroquín's intimates: both had the same grudge against the Divinity, and both were working enthusiastically to free humanity from its yoke. Nevertheless, one day he actually became ready to quarrel with the hirsute professor for turning the Eucharist into ridicule, which confirmed the former in his idea that "the priest was changing his views."
His name was Don Cayetano.
One other of the editors was a light-haired, handsome, and bashful young man, whose seat was in one of the corners of the room, and he lifted his head only when he overheard some brilliant sentence, for such things aroused his frantic admiration. His articles were always a mosaic of sonorous, titillating euphemisms, and adjectives, which formed a large proportion of Gómez de la Floresta's repertory: he played with them like a juggler; if any one desired to make him happy, he could find no easier way than by inventing some metaphor or making use of some harmonious adjective. Rivera, who knew this weakness of his, used to indulge him in it.