“Ah! Isn’t he?”
“No.”
Quentin waited for them to say more, but the clerk entered the store, and the gossips fell silent.
El Pende was the nickname of the man who passed for Quentin’s father. The boy thought about the conversation of the two old gossips for a long time, and came to the conclusion that there had been something obscure about his birth. He was proud and haughty, and considered himself worthy of royal descent, so the idea of dishonour irritated him, and made him desperate.
One day his mother went to ask the Dominie how her son was behaving himself.
“How is he behaving himself?” cried Piñuela with ironic geniality. “Badly! Very badly! He’s the worst boy in the class. A veritable dishonour to my school. He knows nothing about Latin, nor grammar, nor logic, nor anything. I’m sure that he doesn’t even know how to decline musa, musae.”
“So you think he is no good at studying?”
“He is a rowdy, incapable of ever possessing the sublime language of Lacius.”
His mother told her husband what Piñuela had said, and El Pende launched a sermon at Quentin.
“So this is the way you behave after the sacrifices we have made for you!”