“With military punctuality.”
Ortiz then went off, and Manuel was left in the room with the two seamstresses.
La Salvadora, who adopted a very disdainful attitude toward Manuel, seemed to feel offence because he stared at her improved looks with a certain complacency. Enrique, La Salvadora’s little brother, was well-developed and very charming; he played with Manuel and told him, in his childish language, a number of things about his sister and his aunt, as he called La Fea.
After they had had supper, and the child had been put to bed, they visited the room of an embroiderer in the neighbourhood, where Manuel found two old friends of his: Aristas and Aristón.
Aristas had forgotten his gymnastic enthusiasm and had gone into the distribution of newspapers.
He scurried over half of Madrid leaving the papers at one place and another. Aristón had taken his position as a supernumerary. In the morning Aristas distributed newspapers, distributed serial issues, distributed prospectuses; in the afternoon he would paste up posters, and at night he would go to the theatre. He was extraordinarily active; he never paused for rest; he organized parties and dances; on Sundays he gave performances with an amateur company; he knew by heart the whole of “Don Juan Tenorio,” “El puñal del godo,” and other romantic dramas; he had two or three mistresses, and at every hour of the day and night he was talking, speechifying, ordering things about and radiating a wholesome, communicative joy.
Aristón, his necromania somewhat moderated, worked as a fitter in a factory and received good wages. Manuel found it very good to be back again with his friends.
He noticed, or at least thought he noticed, that Aristón was paying court to La Fea and that he was for ever calling her Joaquina, which was her real name. La Fea, finding herself the object of these attentions, became as a result almost good-looking.
That night Manuel returned to his house on the Calle de Galileo. La Justa had not yet come back. Aristas found work for him in a printery on the Carrera de San Francisco.