II.
Doña Aurora had her daily reception—and in the afternoon; nothing less, indeed, than a five o’clock tea, as a society reporter would say—only, without the tea or the wish for it, for if she had offered anything to her guests, the Señora de Pardiñas, who was very old-fashioned in her ideas, would undoubtedly have selected some good slices of ham or the like substantial nourishment. As her friends knew that she was accustomed to go out only in the morning wrapped in her mantle and her fur cape to make a few unceremonious calls or to do some shopping, and that she spent her afternoons at her dining-room window knitting, they attended these receptions punctually, attracted to them by the cheerful fire, by the easy-chairs, by friendship, and by habit.
The larger part of the circle of Doña Aurora’s friends was composed of the companions of her deceased husband, magistrates, or, as she called them in professional parlance, “Señores.” Some few of these, who had already retired from active official life, were the most constant in their attendance. Certain seats in the dining-room were regarded as belonging of right to certain persons—the broad-backed easy-chair was set apart for Don Nicanor Candás, the Crown Solicitor, who loved his ease; the leather-covered arm-chair with the soft seat was for Don Prudencio Rojas; the arm-chair covered with flowered cretonne by the chimney corner—let no one attempt to dispute its possession with the patriarch Don Gaspar Febrero. This venerable personage was the soul of the company, the most active, the most imposing in appearance, and the
“The broad-backed easy-chair was set apart for Don Nicanor Candás.”
gayest of the assemblage, notwithstanding his eighty odd years and his lame leg, broken by jumping from a horse-car. The first quarter of an hour’s conversation was generally devoted to a discussion of the weather and the health of the company; there was not one of these worthy people who was not afflicted with some ailment or other. Some of them, indeed, were full of ailments, so that neither their complaints nor the remedies they discussed were of merely abstract interest. There an account was kept of the fluctuations in the chronic catarrhs, the rheumatic pains, the flatulent attacks, and the heartburns of each one of the assemblage, and they discussed as solemnly as they had formerly discussed a judgment the virtues of salycilic acid or of pectoral lozenges.
The sanitary question being exhausted—for everything exhausts itself—they passed on, almost always following the lead of Señor Febrero, to treat of less agreeable matters. The amiable old man could not bear to hear all this talk of drugs, prescriptions, and potions. “Any one would suppose one had one foot in the grave,” he would say, smiling and showing his brilliant artificial teeth. The subject of the conversation was changed, but it scarcely ever turned on questions of the day. Like a gavotte played by a grandmother on an antiquated harpsichord, the ritornello of souvenirs and reminiscences of the past resounded here. The conversation usually began somewhat as follows:
“Do you remember when I received my appointment to the Canary Islands during the ministry of Narvaez?”
Or:
“What times those were! At least ten years before the celebrated Fontanellas case. My eldest son was not yet born.”