The Fourth Estate, vol. 1

by Armando Palacio Valdés

"To-day is Saturday; let the barber be brought."

"You ass, you silly, that no priest can shrive," replied his sweet consort from her room, "don't you see you are shaved already?"

"Ah so I am," returned the good señor, feeling his face.

At first he asked his friends or acquaintances at the café for money with which to play tresillo, and he drank coffee on trust at the café. But the friends soon left off obliging him, and the proprietor of the establishment declined to even trust him for a peseta, for Doña Brigida almost knocked him downstairs when he one day brought her a bill for a hundred and twenty reales.

So Don Jaime was reduced to spending hours in watching the game of tresillo and in giving advice to the players, which was not wanted. The winners sometimes rewarded him with a glass of rum.

He occasionally played drafts with Don Lorenzo, but as the latter declined to play "for love," Marin had to find something to play for which was not money. He finally decided to have for a stake one of the cigars that his wife gave him in the morning; when he lost it, he had to spend the evening without smoking; sometimes, trying to get his revenge, he lost two or three more, and so he had to hand them over to his opponent on the ensuing days. In the meanwhile he went from friend to friend begging a little tobacco to appease his insufferable longing for a smoke. Poor Marin!

Doña Brigida could never succeed in making him retire to rest early. He had spent so many years in being up till four or five in the morning that it was now impossible to break the habit. As, when he was kept at home, he never went to bed until dawn, and as he spent the night in wandering about the rooms, and the bad habit of being up at night by one's self is very inexpensive, the ingenious señora let him retire to rest at what hour he liked. He remained at the Café de la Marina with the latest customers, and when these had gone he waited while the servants put away the china and glass, and the proprietor was ready to shut up. When he was literally sent off from the establishment, he withdrew to the Rua Nueva, where he sat with his friend the watchman, and, chatting with him, passed the hours before dawn.

Don Lorenzo, Don Agapito, Don Pancho, Don Aquilino, Don German, and Don Justo were Indians. That is to say, they were people who had been sent as children to the West Indians by their parents to earn their living, and they had returned between fifty and sixty years of age with fortunes varying from one hundred and fifty to half a million pesetas. There were more than fifty of these Indians in Sarrio. The hard work and the long state of self-suppression in which they had lived made their ideas of happiness quite different to ours. We find pleasure in a constant change of amusement, in going about and traveling, and enjoying with both body and mind the beautiful variety of things of nature.

But these West Indians looked for nothing more than exemption from the hard law imposed by God on Adam after his fall; and, in truth, they gave themselves up to this peculiar delight. The majority of them had their money invested in government funds, so they had their incomes without any trouble. They were early risers from force of habit, and they paraded the streets or the mole every morning in parties of six or eight. They watched the arrival and departure of boats, and the loading and unloading of cargoes. After dinner, they retired to the Café de la Marina, or to that of La Amistad, and spent three or four hours watching or joining in the game of billiards.

"Go, little ivory ball, go into that pocket! See, see, Don Pancho, it has cannoned." "Come out, my little dear, come out of that pocket." "Ah! ah! well played, Don Lorenzo!" "Did it not go well, Pancho?"