That summer would have been wearisome indeed, and unbearable, if I had not been surrounded by such jolly and frolicsome people, and if the good-natured Portuguese had not afforded us such fun by submitting to the endless pranks of Botello.
When there was no other way of killing an afternoon, little Dumas would snap his fingers and say, throwing back his perspiring head so as to brush away the thick black mane, which was suffocating him:
“Let us play a trick on Corno de Boy. Who will help me catch some bugs?”
“Catch bugs?”
“Yes, just make a cornucopia and fill it with bugs to the top. The small ones will not do; they must be big ones.”
Then every one would go to his room to engage in the strange hunt. Unfortunately, it was not difficult. As soon as we searched under our beds, or our pillows, we would quickly collect a dozen or more fearful fellows. We would carry our tributes to the inventor of the practical joke, and he would put them all together. As soon as we knew that the Portuguese was in bed, we would take off our shoes, and, repressing our desire to laugh, would station ourselves at his door. As soon as Don Miguel began to snore, Botello would softly raise the latch, and, as the headboard was next the door, all that the imp of an artist had to do was to open the cornucopia and scatter the contents over the head and face of the sleeping man. After this was accomplished, Botello would close the door very quietly, while we, convulsed with laughter, and pinching one another in sheer excitement, would wait for the pitched battle to begin. Hardly two minutes would elapse before we would hear the Portuguese turn over in bed. Then we would hear broken and unintelligible phrases; then strong ejaculations; then the scratching of a match, and his astonished exclamation, “By Jove!”
We would come forward with great hypocrisy, inquiring whether he was sick or whether anything had happened. “By Jove!” the good man would exclaim; “pests here, and pests everywhere. By Jove! Ugh!”
The next day we would advise him to change his room; and he would do so, hoping to find some relief; but we would repeat the same performance.
So we managed to kill time during the dog-days, with these stupid practical jokes. What most surprised me was that the Portuguese, who was always the butt of them, never thought of changing his boarding-house nor even gave his persecutor a drubbing.
When I passed in my deficient subjects in September, I was obliged to exert all my energy and resolution in order to do what I thought the Portuguese should have done—that is, to change my boarding-house. The attraction of a gay and idle life, my pleasant intercourse with Botello, for whom it was impossible not to feel a compassionate regard, similar to tenderness; the very defects and inconveniences of that abode, made me much fonder of it than was expedient. But reason finally triumphed. “Life is a treasure too precious to be squandered in boyish pranks and stupid practical jokes,” I reflected, as I was packing up my effects preparatory to taking myself off somewhere else. “If that unfortunate Botello is an idle dreamer, and has made up his mind to fetch up in a public hospital, I, for my part, am determined to acquire a profession, take life seriously, and be my own lord and master. The people in this house are poor deluded mortals, destined to end in nameless wretchedness. I must go where one can work.”