“Peñalar will go, in disguise.”
“No. Besides, Don Sergio knows that I’m not very religious.”
“Then perhaps a schoolmaster would be better.”
“But do you imagine that he’s going to believe I confess to a schoolmaster?”
“No. We’ll have to alter the plan. The master will go to see Don Sergio and tell him that he has a boy in his school, a young prodigy, who is sadly neglected by his mother. One day he asks the prodigy: ‘What’s your father’s and mother’s name, my boy?’ And the boy replies: ‘I haven’t any father or mother; my step-mother is the Baroness de Aynant.’ Then he, the teacher, comes to see you and you tell him that you’re badly off and that you can’t pay the child’s tuition fee, and that his father, a wealthy gentleman, does not even care to know him. The evangelical master asks you several times for the name of this inhuman parent; you refuse to divulge it; but at last he wrests from your lips the name of that cruel creature. The sublime pedagogue then says: ‘I cannot permit the abandonment of this child, of this extraordinary child,’ and he determines to go to see the father of the child.... Well, what do you think of that?”
“Not a badly woven plot. But who’s going to play the schoolmaster? You?”
“No, Peñalar. He was simply made for the part. He was a tutor in a college; you’ll see. This very day I’ll hunt him up and bring him here. In the meantime, you prepare Manuel. Let him look somewhat like a schoolboy. While I’m out looking for Peñalar, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to teach him a little,—the first questions and answers of the catechism, for example.”
In accordance with Mingote’s instructions, the baroness ordered Manuel to comb his hair and spruce up; then she fished out for him a sailor suit with a large white collar. Yet however much they might adorn him and ply their arts upon his person, it was impossible to make him look like a respectable youngster; his indifferent, roguish eyes and his smile, which was half bitter and half sarcastic, betrayed the ragamuffin.
At two o’clock Mingote was back at the baroness’s home, with a dark man of clerical aspect. The man, named Peñalar, spoke with great emphasis; then, when Mingote stated his proposition, Peñalar, abandoning his emphatic tone, discussed the conditions of payment and the percentage due him.
He hesitated about accepting the commission, in order to see whether he could get more favourable terms, but, finding Mingote unyielding, he accepted.