“Everybody knows,” replied Pacheco—“that he’s a lively fish.”
“Ca, man,” answered Quentin. “Why, I’m an unhappy wretch. Just now, I admit, I am capable of doing anything to get money and live well.”
“He contradicts himself at every turn!” exclaimed the Countess, somewhat irritated. “I’m beginning to disbelieve everything he says; whether he tells me that he is bad, or whether he assures me that he is unhappy.”
“You see I’m not to be classified by common standards. One half of me is good, and the other half bad. Sometimes it seems as if I were a demagogue, and I turn out to be a reactionary. I have all sorts of humility and all sorts of arrogance within me. For example, if you were to say to me tomorrow: ‘By selling all the inhabitants of Cordova into slavery, you can make a fortune,’ I would sell them.”
“A lie!” replied the Countess. “You would not sell them.”
“No, I would not sell them if you told me not to.”
“Really, now!”
“Do you know what I used to think of doing when I was in England?” said Quentin.
“What?” asked Pacheco.
“Of putting up a money box. You must have seen one of them in Madrid, I think in the Calle del Fuencarral; people throw lots of money into it. Well, I saw it on my way through the city, and in school I was always thinking: ‘When I get to Spain, I’m going to set up four or five money boxes, and take all the money that’s thrown into them.’”