“No, Señor, the winter of ’57. I remember it was on the 15th of December—I mean the 16th, the birthday of our friend Don Nicanor Candás.”
“But, good Heavens!” exclaimed Don Nicanor, when this was related to him. “It is not right that any one should be endowed with a memory like that. If that infernal Galician does not remember even the date of my birth, a thing that I can never remember myself! As nobody is going to steal any of my years away from me, I don’t see the use of keeping so exact an account of them.”
Don Nicanor Candás, a retired Asturian, from Oviedo, suspicious and conceited like all his townspeople, as biting as pepper and as sharp as a thorn, afforded much amusement to the assemblage through his disputes with Señor de Febrero, whom he opposed systematically, without consideration for his patriarchal privileges or respect for his honorable seniority. The better to confound his adversary Candás adopted a singular method, which was not without humor. He pretended to be as deaf as a post, and he always carried in the pocket of his coat a little silver trumpet, which he put to his ear whenever he was able to answer and refute his opponent’s arguments, but which he would say he had forgotten to bring with him when, not being able to do this, he wished to change the subject of conversation. Such a stratagem could not fail to succeed, and by the help of it he was always enabled to avoid being worsted in a dispute. In his language Señor de Candás was as rude and ill-bred as Don Gaspar was choice, polite and mellifluous, and for this reason he was out of harmony with the other habitués of the house. Nor was he so for this reason alone, but also because he was the only one of them who preferred the news of the day to reminiscences of the past, the only one who brought to this musty senate a breath of out-door air, of real life.
The portentous memory of the octogenarian grew confused and uncertain when recent events were concerned, and Candás, profiting by this defect in the admirable faculties of the patriarch, was always trying to trip him up. “Let us see,” he would say, “how our Don Gaspar would set about proving an alibi. He is impregnable in all that relates to the Calomarde ministry or the regency of Espartero, yet he does not remember what he was doing this morning.” And imitating Don Gaspar’s voice, he would add, “What did I do yesterday? Let me see. Did I go to see Rojas? I think so. What am I saying? No, no. I was walking in Recoletos. Yet I would not swear to that, either.”
This humorous criticism of the patriarch, might, to a certain extent, be applied with equal justice to all the other “Señores.” It would seem as if the present did not exist for them, as if the past only had life and color. They discussed the news of the reporter, Don Nicanor, for a few minutes with the pessimism that is characteristic of old age; then they resumed their progress up the stream of time, plunging with supreme satisfaction into the fogs of vanished years. Perhaps, along with old age, they were influenced in this to some extent by the character acquired in the practice of the law, a profession based on scientific notions already stratified, a science purely historical, in which the spirit of innovation is a heresy, and in which the judicial problems of to-day are solved according to the standard of the Roman law or the jurisdiction of the Visigoths. Thus it was that the reunions in the house of the Señora de Pardiñas might be likened to a rock standing motionless amid the ceaseless surge of the sea of life. The worthy “Señores” did not see that among dusty and worm-eaten parchments, too, living germs palpitate and the spirit of progress lives. Clinging to vain formulas, they fancied they were the custodians of a sacred liquor, when only the empty vase remained in their hands, and, treating of innovations, they placed in the same category of heterodoxy the use of the beard, inferior courts, trial by jury, and the revision of the Codes.
III.
This assembly of sleep-walkers awakened to life and became animated at the entrance Rogelio, who, before taking his afternoon drive or walk, was in the habit of showing himself for a moment at the meeting, laughing at what took place there, but good-naturedly, with the mischievousness of a spoiled child. He had nicknamed it, “The Idle Club.” Candás, on account of his bald yellow skull, he called “Lain Calvo,” and the smooth-shaven and gallant Señor de Febrero, Nuño Rasura. The servants called them by these names among themselves. Even the Señora de Pardiñas laughed in secret, although she pretended to be vexed and would say to the boy:
“It is very wrong for you to turn them into ridicule, in that way—those poor gentlemen who are all so fond of you!”
And they were indeed fond of him. The moment Rogelio appeared it was as if a ray of warm, golden sunlight had entered a closed and darkened room where furniture, hangings, paper, and pictures have all acquired the faded hue imparted by the dust and the damp. All the old men loved the boy; one of them remembered him when he was a child in arms, another had been present at his first communion; this one had brought him toys when he had the scarlet-fever; that other, a professional colleague and the intimate friend of his father, became a child again when he thought of the baptismal sweetmeats. If they had acted according to their feelings, notwithstanding the black fringe that adorned Rogelio’s upper lip, they would have showered kisses on him, and brought him caramels and peanuts. For them he was always the little one, the boy. It was true that by a curious illusion the worthy guests of Señora de Pardiñas were disposed to regard the young as children and those of mature years as young. They would say, for instance; “So Valdivieso is dead! Why, he was in the prime of life, he was only a boy!” And it was necessary for the malicious Asturian, putting his ear-trumpet, or his hand as a substitute, to his ear, to interpose, “A boy indeed! a pretty sort of children you are dreaming of, truly. Valdivieso was past fifty.” “He was not so old as that, not so old as that!” “What do you mean? And the time he was in his nurse’s arms and learning to walk, does that count for nothing?”
Where Rogelio was concerned, they carried to an extreme this whim of forgetting the passage of time, and turning a deaf ear to the striking of the clock. Every additional year he spent in the study of the law, was for them a fresh wonder; they could not fancy him a lawyer: they would have had him still at school learning to read. Once, on his return from a summer excursion to San Sebastián, Señor de Rojas had said to him with the utmost good faith: