These distinguished men were the cream of the illustrious city; some rich landowners, others very poor, but all alike free from lofty aspirations. They had the imperturbable tranquillity of the beggar who desires nothing more so long as he has a crust of bread with which to cheat hunger, and the sun to warm him. What chiefly distinguished the Orbajosans of the Casino was a sentiment of bitter hostility toward all strangers, and whenever any stranger of note appeared in its august halls, they believed that he had come there to call in question the superiority of the land of the garlic, or to dispute with it, through envy, the incontestable advantages which nature had bestowed upon it.
When Pepe Rey presented himself in the Casino, they received him with something of suspicion, and as facetious persons abounded in it, before the new member had been there a quarter of an hour, all sorts of jokes had been made about him. When in answer to the reiterated questions of the members he said that he had come to Orbajosa with a commission to explore the basin of the Nahara for coal, and to survey a road, they all agreed that Señor Don José was a conceited fellow who wished to give himself airs, discovering coalbeds and planning railroads. Some one added:
“He has come to a bad place for that, then. Those gentlemen imagine that here we are all fools, and that they can deceive us with fine words. He has come to marry Doña Perfecta’s daughter, and all that he says about coalbeds is only for the sake of appearances.”
“Well, this morning,” said another, a merchant who had failed, “they told me at the Dominguez’ that the gentleman has not a peseta, and that he has come here in order to be supported by his aunt and to see if he can catch Rosarito.”
“It seems that he is no engineer at all,” added an olive-planter, whose plantations were mortgaged for double their value. “But it is as you say: those starvelings from Madrid think they are justified in deceiving poor provincials, and as they believe that here we all wear tails—”
“It is plain to be seen that he is penniless—”
“Well, half-jest and the whole earnest, he told us last night that we were lazy barbarians.”
“That we spent our time sunning ourselves, like the Bedouins.”
“That we lived with the imagination.”
“That’s it; that we lived with the imagination.”