"No, sir, I have not read it, nor have I any desire to!" said Señor M——, in fury.... "Have you read it yourself?"
"No; but though I have not read it," replied the minister, putting on a bold face, "I know that in the first section are indicated the causes which permit confiscation.... And if I have not, here is Señor R——, who was a minister at that time, and can tell us."
Señor R—— was an old gentleman, smoothly shaven; and when he heard his name called, and perceived that all eyes were turned upon him, with a smile that was half malicious and half abashed, he said:—
"The truth of the matter is that I myself cannot remember having read it through!"
At first these discussions and his constantly growing acquaintance with the great engine of politics entranced him; but afterwards, when he came to know by sight, and even have the honor of a personal acquaintance with almost all of the grandees of the kingdom, and had learned from their lips not a few of the secrets of governing nations, he had the sentiment to comprehend that he was beginning to weary of it all; most evenings he preferred to take a book of Shakspere, Goethe, Hegel, or Spinoza, and sit down by his wife's side, and read while she sewed or did her embroidery, rather than wander up and down the corridors of Congress, and listen to the dissertations of Señor Tarabilla and other distinguished men.
And I say that it was sentiment that taught him this; because an inner voice whispered to him that this was not the way to attain fortune and celebrity, nay, he should try to imitate step by step the career of Señor Tarabilla; but though that was the better course, he nevertheless determined to follow the worse, because human nature is weak, and often hurled to destruction by its passions. Even on those afternoons when he deigned to go up to the Congress, instead of joining the groups, taking up with the deputies, flattering the ministers, and offering his opinions in regard to whatever question might arise, letting himself be carried away by melancholy (perhaps by the longing for his wife's company, his armchair, or his Shakspere), he would go and sit down alone on some sofa, and there give himself up to his thoughts or his dreams, and try to delude himself into the idea that he was fulfilling his duty.
He would look with distracted eyes at the throng of deputies, journalists and politicians tagging at their heels, and their feverish activity, their agitation, and their eagerness had not the slightest power to inspire the lazy fellow with the noble desire of laboring for his country, and contributing in some way to its happiness.
At times, not having anything to think about, he would amuse himself in seeking for resemblances between the men whom he saw and those whom he had known before. His attention was particularly attracted by a deputy, a custom-house director, who bore the closest resemblance to a certain fisherman of Rodillero, named Talín. He had known Talín under particularly sad circumstances. One of his sons had died of measles, and he had not a shilling in the house with which to bury him; the poor man had to carry him in his arms to the cemetery, and dig the grave himself. A few months afterward Talín was lost in a famous gale which has figured in more than one novel. And how closely this deputy resembled Talín! They were as like as two eggs.
There was another whose face was decorated with big scars and cicatrices, and whose eyebrows and eyelashes had been lost by reason of some secret malady which obliged him to go every year to Archena; this man struck him as particularly like a poor miner whom he had known at Langreo. The latter worked in the galleries of the mines, spending the livelong day in a narrow hole which he himself had laboriously to excavate. One day the gas took fire and burned his face and hands horribly. After that he was obliged to beg.
When he was weary of these exercises of imagination, he would call Merelo y García, and make him sit by his side, and delight in hearing him relate with characteristic vehemence all the gossip from behind the scenes, if it is not irreverent to compare the lobbies of Congress with the flies of a theatre.