“Yes, sir.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. I’m the man.”
“But you’re consumptive, aren’t you?”
“I? No, sir.”
“Well, that’s what they tell me in this letter, understand?... That you have seven children and that from your looks I can understand that you’re in the final stage of consumption, see?”
González Parla was non-plussed. He confessed that it was true he did not have consumption; but he had had a consumptive father, and since his father had suffered from tuberculosis, the doctors had told him that he, too, would contract it,—that, indeed, he was already in the early stages, so that if he were as yet not really consumptive, it was almost the same as if he were.
“I don’t understand all this, see?” said the general, after listening to so defective an explanation. “I do gather, though, that this is a hoax. How can a fellow be so fat and yet be sick, hey? But, anyway,” and he handed out a bill folded between his fingers, “take this and be off with you, and don’t be such a faker.”
“This corpulency is misleading,” replied González Parla humbly, accepting the bill. “It’s due to all the potatoes I eat.” And he disappeared in shame, as fast as he could.