"You see how it is, friend Ribot. The madness of my brother-in-law has carried him to the extreme that I have prophesied so many times."
"Poor Emilio!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, poor indeed. At present he hasn't a peseta, nor anybody who will lend him one."
"The worst of all is, according to what has been told me, his illness is very serious."
He found nothing to answer to this. After a while he again took out his pipe and paused.
"Does it seem to you, friend Ribot," he exclaimed in indignant accents, "as if a man with a family has the right to throw away his capital according to his own caprices and reduce that family to destitution?"
I shrugged my shoulders, without knowing what to answer, suspecting that Sabas included himself among the most important members of that suffering family.
He put his pipe back between his teeth, and having, doubtless, thus got himself in connection with his electric current, contrived to move onward. He was not long in interrupting it, by taking out the pipe again, spitting, and going on talking.
"I understand perfectly how a bachelor can dispose of his means as he pleases; how, getting up some morning out of humor, he could go out on the balcony and toss over everything that he owns. At most there is only himself to pay for the consequences of his whims. But when a man who is not alone in the world, who has assumed sacred obligations to fulfil, throws himself into senseless speculations and wastes an important property, his conduct seems to me not merely imprudent, but also immoral."
I did not doubt that Sabas included among these sacred obligations that of providing him with means to submit to his own fascinations all the sopranos and contraltos who presented themselves on the Valencian horizon; and not to say anything impertinent, I determined to hold my peace. In this manner, using his pipe like a manipulator of an electric machine to retard or hasten his fancy, and slopping over in a torrent of critical wisdom, we reached at last the house where his brother-in-law lived. It was not so sumptuous as that in the Calle del Mar, but new and elegant. We mounted to the apartment on the second floor, which was the one that Martí occupied, and rang. Regina, the old doncella, came out to open for us, and on seeing me could not refrain from a cry of surprise.