But nothing so much astonished our friends at Villamar as the change brought about in the shop of the barber Ramon Perez. Ramon, some time after the death of his father, which happened a month or two after the departure of the Gaviota, could not resist the desire to proceed to Madrid, to follow the ingrate, who had sacrificed him for a stranger.
He went, and was absent two weeks.
These two weeks passed, he returned, and with him brought—
1st, An exhaustless supply of lies and bragging.
2d, An infinite variety of songs and Italian scraps, horrible to listen to.
3d, An assumption of the fashionable, impudent airs, and a free-and-easy manner capable of provoking the unfortunate inhabitants of Villamar, whose ears and jaws, more unfortunate still, retained for a long time the traces of these dangerous acquisitions.
4th, The most absurd tendencies to copy the king of barbers, Figaro, whom, unfortunately, he had seen represented at the theatre of Seville.
Ramon Perez had also brought from his journey one thing which he revealed to nobody: a magnificent kick, which was bestowed upon him one evening, under the windows of Marisalada.
Thanks to one circumstance, which we learned later, the barber had come into possession of a considerable sum of money. Then his souvenirs of Figaro and of Seville rose up in his mind more intensely. He embellished his shop with Asiatic luxury, associated with disorder the most ridiculous. He hung against the walls three engravings: a Telemachus, large as a drum-major; a Mentor, with a full beard; and a lank Calypso. He believed and affirmed that they were St. Peter and the Magdalen. The wags said that every thing was remodelled at Ramon’s except his razors; but Perez said that the device of the age was, “Appear, rather than be.”
He had a sign painted of such huge dimensions that he was obliged to construct two pillars to sustain it.