“Do you know what her stepmother, the Countess, said? Well, she said: ‘For all her prudishness, that hussy has married Juan de Dios for his money!’”
“What that female said is not important.”
“All women are just females to you....”
“And it’s true.”
“Well, if you say that about me....”
“Come, come, this is no place for a scene, and don’t shout so.”
“Are you going to strike me? Tell me, are you going to strike me?”
“No; I shall prudently withdraw first,” answered Quentin, rising and getting ready to go.
At this moment Cornejo, the poet, entered the café accompanied by a tall, thin gentleman with an aquiline nose, and a very black and very long beard cut in Moorish fashion. The two came up to the table and sat down.
The poet and the other gentleman had just left the last performance, and were discussing it. Cornejo thought that the musical comedy they had just seen was not altogether bad, the tall man with the black beard insisted that as far as he was concerned it had been superbly wearisome. This gloomy fellow then asserted that for him, life held little promise, and that of all disagreeable and irritating lives, the most irritating and disagreeable was that in a provincial capital; and of all the lives in provincial capitals, the worst was that of Cordova.