“Perhaps—perhaps it is.”
“What a simpleton!” murmured the countryman to himself.
“Isn’t it true either, that all beggars have the right to use the ‘Don’?”
“Yes, indeed, that’s true enough,” answered Quentin, smiling his gipsy smile.
The three husky youths in the shawls got off at the next station to Cordova. The sky cleared for an instant: up and down the platform walked men with broad-brimmed Andalusian hats, young women with flowers in their hair, old women with huge, red umbrellas....
“And those young men who just went by,” asked the Frenchman, full of curiosity about everything, “each one carries his knife, eh?”
“Oh, yes!—Probably,” said Quentin, unconsciously imitating his interlocutor’s manner of speech.
“The knives they carry are very large?”
“The knives! Yes, very large.”
“What might their dimensions be?”