“Don’t you laugh, for there is something from ‘Green Beans,’ also, or very much like it, because I have heard that sort of a clatter in comic opera. Now he skips to the Symphony in A minor of the sordo sublime—fellows, I am infuriated! I shall protest! This is simply highway robbery!”
In the second act Trinito’s indignation went on in a crescendo no less noisy than that of the closing duet. In the third, he completely bored us with his exposures of reminiscences and plagiarisms, shouting so loudly as to attract the attention of the audience, pointing out the fragments of a hand of Mozart’s or a shin of Beethoven’s, which were scattered through the opera; and at the fourth act, his rage grew so overwhelming that he would not allow us to stay till the end of the opera.
“Let us go before they call out that counterfeiter! I would hiss him if I remained, and one must not raise a rumpus here. Come on, then; let us be discreet. I am so enraged I scarcely know what I am doing. Hold me, carry me to the street!”
We were amazed at this outburst, as surprising in the usually calm and equable Cuban as it would have been in a canary or a lamb, and consented to leave before anybody else, making off through the lobby toward the door.
Without transition, we passed from the heated, vibrating, and echoing air of the orchestra circle, out to the chilly lobby, which was all the colder for being deserted, since only two ushers were walking up and down there. A current of air, sharp as a stiletto, entered my half-opened mouth, while I was laughing, and my dilated nostrils, and went as by instinct to my chest, where I felt a singular compression.
“Cover your mouths, gentlemen,” said the practical Luis, “or we shall catch the greatest pneumonia of the Christian era. Cover your mouth, Salustio; don’t be childish.”
I searched for my handkerchief in order to protect myself with it, but I already felt that strange warning, that dull, numb pain of the disease which so insidiously enters our bodies, taking advantage of our imprudence or carelessness, as a thief who sees the key in the door and improves the opportunity to investigate the chest.
“I believe that I have already caught it,” I murmured, with some anxiety.
“Don’t worry; let us go to Fornos’s and take some punch. Come on, you’ll see how nice and hot it will be,” said my companions, as we emerged into the bleak Plaza de Oriente. We proceeded to Fornos’s and took our punch. Trinito treated us, and gave us a fresh monograph on the plagiarisms and rhapsodies in the opera; while he sang his indignation for us, and even played it for us on the table. That time he was determined to write a musical criticism; of course he would! He was going to pulverize the composer, or the rat, to be more explicit, which he had caught in the act of visiting Wagner’s pocket.
I went to bed late and did not sleep well. The next day I awoke feeling inexplicably tired and depressed, with that species of despondency or dejection which precedes any great physical disorder. Carmen noticed that I did not look well and begged me to lie down, scolding me gently for having gone to bed the night before at such an unearthly hour.