The Grandee's guests resumed their game, laughing all the while, but the count became more and more thoughtful and absent.
At last no longer able to control his upset state of nerves, he rose from his seat saying:
"I say, Don Enrique, will you kindly take my place; this pain is so tiresome that I must move about?"
CHAPTER II
THE DISCOVERY
When the count went back to the drawing-room, he found the young people preparing for a rigodon (a country dance). The seat at the piano was occupied by one of the daughters of the Pensioner; for such was the name given in the town to Don Cristobal Mateo, as he was an old government official, who, after serving many years in the Philippines, had retired some time ago on an income of 30,000 reales.[H]
He had a military bearing and quite a martial aspect, with his white moustache, large rolling eyes, thick eyebrows, and powerful hands. Nevertheless, there was not a kinder man in the Spanish dominions. His career had been cast in Exchequer offices, and he always expressed strong opinions against the power of the army. He maintained that the blood-suckers of the State were not those employed in civil functions, but the army and navy. The fact was demonstrated by the production of figures and notes on the subject, when he would quite lose himself in bureaucratic divagations. He said that war was caused by the thirst for blood emanating from the superfluous energy of the nation. This was a phrase he had read in the Boletin de Contribuciones Indirectas and appropriated as his own with marked effect. He said soldiers were vagrants, and his aversion to all uniforms and epaulettes was extreme. When the Corporation of Lancia talked of applying to the government for a regiment to garrison the city, he, as councillor, opposed the measure most resolutely.
What was the good of bringing a lot of spongers into the neighbourhood? Instead of having the comfort of being at some distance from a regiment, they would have all the disadvantages of harbouring one. Everything would get dear, for the colonels and officers liked to live well and have the best of everything, "after all the hard work they did to earn it," he added, ironically. Then they were all gamblers, and their bad example would contaminate the youths of the place, who never indulged in such licence except on times of holiday making. As they were such an idle lot (Don Cristobal firmly believed that a soldier had nothing to do), one could imagine what a set of rogues they were! In short, the regiment would be a corrupting element and a source of disturbance in the place. So Mateo got his way, not merely because it was his way, but because the Minister of War did not consider it necessary to send soldiers to Lancia, considering the peaceable condition of the inhabitants.
With his income of 30,000 reales, the Pensioner might have lived very comfortably in such a cheap place, if his daughters had not been possessed with the silly fancy of preferring the hats of Madrid to those that were made by the milliner of the Calle de Joaquin, and eight-button gloves to four-button ones. Such superior tastes gave rise in the Pensioner's house to many an upset, with all its accompanying tears, hysterics, regrets, disinclination for food, &c. In these terrible conflicts it must be confessed that Don Cristobal did not always comport himself with the dignity, firmness and courage befitting his large moustachios and strongly marked eyebrows. Certainly he was always alone in the fray. Never by any chance did one of his girls side with him, unless it was on a question apart from the domestic arrangement of the house, when some of the daughters joined with papa against the others. But whenever a problem of economy came to the fore, the Pensioner was sure to have all four children against him. Then Don Cristobal, like an experienced general, tried every means to rout the enemy, or to capitulate under fair terms.
One day the girls were suddenly seized with a fancy for morocco-leather shoes like those of some young lady in the town, who proved to be Fernanda Estrada-Rosa. Then Don Cristobal became pensive and turned the matter over in his mind, with the result of casually mentioning, in the course of conversation at supper, that he had heard at la Innovadora (the best bootmaker's) that morocco boots were considered very dangerous in Lancia on account of the damp; and that Don Nicanor, a local doctor happening to be there at the time, observed that morocco was fatal in such a cold rainy climate; in fact, catarrhs, sometimes developing to galloping consumption, were frequently caught from cold feet. But long before the poor old man finished his diatribe against morocco, his daughters burst in with such ironical laughter, and sarcastic speeches that he was quite crushed.