"Will he come again to-day?"
"He'll come. Of course he'll come! Stop talking, fillino, stop talking and take your chocolate. It's as you like it—thin and with froth."
"I don't think I have any appetite for it. Put it there beside me."
III.
In Vilamorta there was a Casino, a real Casino, small indeed, and shabby, besides, but with its billiard-table, bought at second-hand, and its boy, an old man of seventy, who once a year dusted and brushed the green cover. For the only reunions in the Casino of Vilamorta were those of the rats and the moths who assembled daily, to amuse themselves by eating away the woodwork. The chief centers of reunion were the two apothecaries' shops, that of Doña Eufrasia, fronting the Plaza and that of Agonde in the high street. Doña Eufrasia's shop, nestling in the shadowy corner of an archway, was dark; in the hours of meeting it was lighted by a smoky kerosene lamp; its furniture consisted of four grimy chairs and a bench.
From the street all that was to be seen were dark mass-cloaks, overcoats, broad-brimmed hats, two or three clerical tonsures that shone at a distance like metal clasps against the dark background of the shop. Agonde's shop, on the contrary, was brightly illuminated and gloried in the possession of six glass globes of brilliant coloring and fantastic effect, three rows of shelves laden with imposing and scientific-looking white porcelain jars bearing Latin inscriptions in black letters, a divan, and two leather-covered armchairs. The two contrasting shops were also antagonistic; they had declared war to the knife against each other.
Agonde's shop, liberal and enlightened in its opinions, said of the reactionary shop that it was a center of unending conspiracies, where El Cuartel Real and all the rebel proclamations had been read during the civil war, and where for the past five years ammunition-belts were being diligently prepared for a Carlist party that never took the field; and according to the reactionary shop, that of Agonde was the headquarters of the Freemasons; where lampoons were printed on a little handpress and where gambling was shamelessly carried on. The meetings in the reactionary shop broke up with religious punctuality at ten, in winter, and eleven in summer, while the liberal shop continued to cast on the sidewalk until midnight the light of its two bright lamps and the blue, red, and emerald-green reflections of its glass globes; for which reasons the members of the liberal reunion called those of the other party owls, while those of the reactionary clique gave their opponents the name of members of the Casino of the Gaming Table.
Segundo never put his foot over the threshold of the reactionary shop and, since the beginning of his acquaintance with Leocadia Otero, he had shunned that of Agonde also, for his vanity was wounded by the jests and gibes of the apothecary, who was noted for his waggish humor. One evening as Saturnino Agonde was crossing the Plaza of the Alamo at an unusually late hour—on his way the devil only knew whither—he had caught sight of Leocadia and Segundo seated at the window, and had heard the psalmody of the verses which the poet was declaiming. From that time Segundo had seen depicted on the countenance of Agonde, a practical man of a sanguine temperament, such contempt for sentimental trifling and for poetry that he instinctively avoided him as far as it was possible to do so. Occasionally, however, whenever he desired to read El Imparcial, to know what was going on, he would stop in at the shop for a few moments. He did so on the day after his conversation with the echo.
The meeting was very animated. Segundo's father was leaning back on the sofa with a newspaper resting on his knees; his brother-in-law, the notary Genday, Ramon, the confectioner, and Agonde were hotly disputing with him. At the further end of the shop Carmelo, the tobacconist, Don Fermin, alias Tropiezo, [1] the physician, the secretary of the Municipality and the Alcalde sat playing tresillo at a small table. When Segundo entered, he remarked something unusual in the air of his father and of the group that surrounded him, but certain that he would presently be told the cause, he silently dropped into an armchair, lighted a cigar, and took up the copy of El Imparcial that was lying on the counter.