When Don Modesto, stunned by the noise of the quarrel, heard the laughter which succeeded the tones of violent anger, he profited by the occasion to sneak away from the battle-field. He had scarcely escaped from the dispute between Momo and Maria, when new terrors assailed him, at the sight of the single eye of Rosita, an eye full of severity and of menace. Don Modesto went, and seated himself in a corner, and, like a bird, who sees a storm approaching, hides his head under his wing, he bent down his head, and waited.
“It was very becoming,” said Rosita, “and very dignified, in a man of your age, and of your importance, one of the first authorities of the place, a man who has seen his name printed in large letters in the Gazette, to go near these people, near these brainless fools, not to say worse, and to commit yourself with this woman, whose marriage is but a long scandal.”
“But, Rosita, I am not committed to the quarrel, it was she who came in where I was.”
“If you had not been at this bad barber’s, at the house of this everlasting singer; if you had not stopped there, with open mouth listening to his paltry songs, you would not have been exposed to being a witness of such a shameful scene.”
“But, Rosita, you forget that I must be shaved now and then, under pain of otherwise being mistaken for a pioneer; that this good Ramon Perez shaves me for nothing, as his father did before him; and that both politeness and gratitude demand of me that I listen with patience when he sings.”
“I tell you that it is an abomination to see you among such people, like intimates.”
“Rosita, can you speak thus of Ramon, who shaves me for nothing, and of Marisalada, whom ministers and generals have applauded, and who has been so good as to put a cockade on my hat?”
“Yes, a cockade big as a salad! She mocks you. Ah! she is good, this woman, who let her father die in a garret, all alone, in misery and forgetfulness, while she sang herself hoarse on the stage.”
“But, Rosita, if she were ignorant of the gravity—”
“She knew he was ill, that should have been sufficient. While a father suffers, a daughter should not sing. Ah! she is good, this woman, in her conduct forcing her husband to fly to the Indies to die there of shame and grief.”