"Yes."
"At your service, then. My name is Alonso de Guzmán Calderón y Téllez. This same fellow that's talking to you now has been director of a circus in America; I've travelled through all the countries and sailed over every sea in the world; at present I'm adrift in a violent tempest; at night I go from café to café with this phonograph, and the next morning I carry around one of these betting apparatuses that consists of an Infiel[1] Tower with a spiral. Underneath the tower there's a space with a spring that shoots a little bone ball up the spiral, and then the bone falls upon a board perforated with holes and painted in different colours. That is my livelihood. I! Director of an equestrian circus! This is what I've descended to; an assistant to Tabuenca. What things come to pass in this world!"
[Footnote 1: i.e. Faithless. A pun on Eiffel.]
"I should like to ask you," interrupted Roberto, "if during your residence in Cuco's hostelry you ever made the acquaintance of a certain Rosita Buenavida, a circus acrobat."
"Rosita Buenavida! You say that her name was Rosita Buenavida?… No,
I don't recall…. I did have a Rosita in my company; but her name
wasn't Buenavida (i. e., Goodlife); she'd have been better named
Evil-life and evil habits, too."
"Perhaps she changed her name," said Roberto impatiently. "What age was the Rosita that you knew?"
"Well, I'll tell you; I was in Paris in '68; had a contract with the Empress Circus. At that time I was a contortionist and they called me the Snake-Man; then I became an equilibrist and adopted the name of Don Alonso. Alonso is my name. After four months of that Pérez and I—Pérez was the greatest gymnast in the world—went to America, and two or three years later we met Rosita, who must have been about twenty-five or thirty at that time."
"So that the Rosita you're talking about should be sixty-odd years old today," computed Roberto. "The one I'm looking for can't be more than thirty at most."
"Then she's not the one. Caramba, how sorry I am!" murmured Don Alonso, seizing the glass of coffee and milk and raising it to his lips as if he feared it were going to be wrested from him. "And what a sweet little girl she was! She had eyes as green as a cat's. Oh, she was a pretty chit, a peach."
Roberto had sunk into meditation; Don Alonso continued his chatter, turning to Manuel: