Don Inocencio was a little pale man with a habit of inflating his cheeks; when he did this, he looked more important than at other times. He held a roll of paper in his left hand; he had very nice manners and spoke in English on finding Hi there. He was in a state of some agitation.
“My dear lady,” he said, “I have come all this way, in a great hurry, because of the importance of the occasion. The man has been permitted and permitted till he has presumed and presumed; but now he has outstepped all bounds; he has, if I may say so, without inelegance, burst, like the frog in the fable.”
“Who has burst without inelegance?” Rosa asked. “Do tell us. Could he do it again, publicly?”
“He has done it publicly,” Don Inocencio said, “It cannot be done twice in a civilised country.”
“Who is this?” Donna Emilia asked. “I do not quite understand? Has there been some accident?”
“I thought that at first,” Don Inocencio answered. “I thought at first, this is not genuine; this is a ruse or trick, designed by an enemy. It would be a skilled thrust, though that of a devil, to lead people to suppose that this came from our enemy. Then I thought, no, this thing is too mad to be anything but genuine; no counterfeit would be so crazy.”
“But what is it, Don Inocencio?”
“Have you not read the proclamation?”
“A proclamation; which; what proclamation?”
“There is at present only one, which will be historical. This is it, this scroll. They started to put this upon the walls at the time of the siesta; it is now everywhere; can it be that you have not seen it?”