The father had made for his own use a set of false teeth. He had taken a bone napkin-ring, cut it into two unequal parts, and, by filing it on either side, had fitted the larger to his mouth. Then with a tiny saw he made the teeth, and to simulate the gums he covered a part of the former napkin-ring with sealing-wax. Rebolledo could remove and insert the false set with remarkable ease, and he could eat with them perfectly, provided, as he said, there was anything to eat.
Perico, the son of the dwarf, promised even to outstrip his father in cleverness. Between the hunger that he often suffered, and the persistent tertian fevers, he was very thin and his complexion was citreous. He was not, like his father, deformed, but slender, delicate, with sparkling eyes and rapid, jerky motions. He looked, as the saying is, like a rat under a bowl.
One of the proofs of his inventive genius was a mechanical snuffler that he had made of a shoe-polish tin.
Perico cherished a particular enthusiasm for white walls, and wherever he discovered one he would sketch, with a piece of coal, processions of men, women and horses, houses puffing smoke, soldiers, vessels at sea, weaklings engaging in struggle with burly giants, and other equally diverting scenes.
Perico's masterpiece was the Don Tancredo triptych, done in coal on the walls of the narrow entrance lane to La Corrala. This work overwhelmed the neighbours with admiration and astonishment.
The first part of the triptych showed the valiant hypnotizer of bulls on his way to the bull-ring, in the midst of a great troop of horsemen; the legend read: "Don Tancredo on his weigh to the bulls." The second part represented the "king of bravery" in his three-cornered hat, with his arms folded defiantly before the wild beast; underneath, the rubric "Don Tancredo upon his pedestal." Under the third part one read: "The bull takes to flight." The depiction of this final scene was noteworthy; the bull was seen fleeing as one possessed of the devil amidst the toreros, whose noses were visible in profile while their mouths and both eyes were drawn in front view.
Despite his triumphs, Perico Rebolledo did not grow vain, nor did he consider himself superior to the men of his generation; his greatest pleasure was to sit down at his father's side in the patio of La Corrala, amidst the works of old clocks, bunches of keys and other grimy, damaged articles, and ponder over the possible utilization of an eye-glass crystal, for example, or a truss, or the rubber bulb of a syringe, or some similar broken, out-of-order contrivance.
Father and son spent their lives dreaming of mechanical contraptions; they considered nothing useless; the key that could open no door, the old-style coffee-pot, as queer as some laboratory instrument, the oil lamp with machine attachment,—all these articles were treasured up, taken apart and put to some use. Rebolledo, father and son, wasted more ingenuity in living wretchedly than is employed by a couple of dozen comic authors, journalists and state ministers dwelling in luxury.
Among the friends of Perico Rebolledo were the Aristas, who became intimate with Manuel.
The Aristas, two brothers, sons of an ironing-woman, were apprentices in a foundry of the near-by Ronda. The younger passed his days in a continuous capering, indulging in death-defying leaps, climbing trees, walking on his hands and performing acrobatic stunts from all the door transoms.