It was already past noon and he began to feel the pangs of hunger. He tried to pass quickly by the Court buildings in the Plaza Lavalle, anxious to escape the notice of his former colleagues. But suddenly, as he was crossing the street, he saw in front of him a shabbily dressed individual who was bowing to him with exaggerated servility. It was none other than Moreno, still haunting the courts in quest of copying to do, or errands to run. Monsalvat inquired after his wife and Irene.
"Oh, Doctor, misfortune has taken possession of my hearth and home! Irene—but why speak of past troubles? Some other time, Doctor, I'll tell you this melancholy story. Now we are struggling, with a little success, I may say, against the cruel persecutions of the Fates. My wife has a position as janitress in a tenement house. It's a little distance out, over Barracas way, near the bridge. But we manage to keep alive."
As he went on talking it occurred to Monsalvat that he had found a solution for his problem. He asked Moreno if there were any unoccupied rooms in the house he spoke of.
"Yes, Doctor, there are. But why this question?"
"Because I wish to take one of them at once."
Moreno stood open-mouthed with astonishment. Then he protested in a welter of words. He could never permit Doctor Monsalvat, that light of the Law, to live in the wretched hovel which he inhabited. Monsalvat, however, insisted that that was his affair. Moreno concluded that Monsalvat had chosen that section of the city to carry out some kind of philanthropical scheme, and consented to take him home. Besides, he was sure to profit eventually by Monsalvat's presence in the same house! A peso here and there, for a quiet little session in a saloon now and then, to say nothing of the pretexts he could find for borrowing—urgent creditors, need of clothing, food, and so on!
Moreno was giving his address when some words of Monsalvat's thrust him into unfathomable depths of bewilderment. The doctor was actually asking him for carfare! Moreno stood transfixed, his arms outspread, a look of terror on his sallow face.
"You're surely joking, Doctor!" he exclaimed, incredulous. "Can it be that Moreno, poor pariah that he is, Moreno, stepson of Providence, should be asked to lend a—a nickel—to the learned and illustrious Doctor Fernando Monsalvat?"
He looked at his admired protector and saw that now, at least, the man was not to be envied. He was on the point of taking back what he had said about a room to let in his tenement house. Finally, in a burst of generosity, he took a dime from his pocket and gave it to Monsalvat. As the latter walked away, Moreno stood a full quarter of an hour, his arms crossed on his chest, meditating and philosophizing on the vicissitudes of human destiny.
Monsalvat took up his abode in the tenement. He wrote to his father's wife, suggesting a cash compromise for the rights to his father's property that he might claim from the surmised existence of an early will, rights that Ruiz de Castro had always urged him to assert. As long as he had enough to live on, he had seen no reason why he should claim any of the Monsalvat property. His letter was modest in its tone, intimating that only a distressing financial situation could have persuaded him to bring up the question of his father's testamentary provisions. Moreno delivered the letter.