However drunk he might be, he never forgot his duty and when the hour for starting the night's baking arrived he would stagger off to the bakery; the moment he took up his position before the mouth of the furnace his intoxication evaporated and he set to work as soberly as ever, himself laughing at his extravagances.
The German possessed remarkable organic powers and unheard-of resistance; Manuel had to sleep during all his free time, and even at that never rose from his bed completely rested. For the two months that he spent in the bakery Manuel lived like an automaton. Work at the furnace had so shifted about his hours of sleep that the days seemed to him nights and the nights, days.
One day Manuel fell ill and all the strength that had been sustaining him abandoned him suddenly; he gave up his job, took his two-week's pay and without knowing how, fairly dragging himself thither, made his way to the lodging-house.
Petra, finding him in this condition, made him go to bed, and Manuel lay for nearly two weeks in the delirium of a very high fever. On getting out it seemed that he had grown; he was much emaciated, and felt in his whole body a great lassitude and languor and such a keen sensitivity that any word the least mite too harsh would affect him to the point of tears.
When he was able to go out into the street again, he bought, at
Petra's suggestion, a gold-plated brooch which he presented to Doña
Casiana; she was so pleased with the gift that she told her servant
the boy might remain in the house until he was completely recovered.
Those days were among the most pleasant that Manuel ever spent in his whole life; the one thing that bothered him was hunger.
The weather was superb and in the mornings Manuel would go strolling along the Retiro. The journalist whom they called Superman employed Manuel in copying his notes and articles, and as compensation, no doubt, let him take novels by Paul de Kock and Pigault-Lebrun, some of them highly spiced, as for example Nuns and Corsairs and That Rascal Gustave.
The love theories of these two writers convinced Manuel so well that he tried to put them into practise with the landlady's niece. During the previous two years she had developed so fully that she was already a woman.
One night, during the early hour after supper, either through the influence of the spring season or in obedience to the theories of the author of Nuns and Corsairs, Manuel persuaded the landlady's girl of the advantages of a very private consultation, and a neighbour saw the two of them depart together upstairs and enter the garret.
As they were about to shut themselves in, the neighbour surprised them and brought them, deeply contrite, into the presence of Doña Casiana. The thrashing that the landlady administered to her niece deprived the girl of all desire for new adventures and the aunt of any strength to administer another to Manuel.