During one of the numerous periods in which the baroness had found herself financially embarrassed she had resorted to a usurer on the Calle del Pez. Instead of the moneylender there appeared his clerk, Mingote himself, who arranged the matter between the two of them. Ever since that time Mingote was a regular visitor at the baroness’s. Who was Don Bonifacio? What was Don Bonifacio?
There are bimanous creatures who rouse a most extraordinary curiosity. In the natural history of man they resemble those species of monotremes situated between the birds and the mammals,—the wonder of zoölogists. It is to this class of interesting bimanal animals that Mingote belonged.
This Mingote was about fifty, short, stout, with dyed moustaches, fleshy face, red, tiny nose, cynical mouth and the general appearance of a police agent or a busybody broker. He dressed ostentatiously, and delighted in wearing a thick chain in his waistcoat and false diamonds, as big as chick-peas, on his shirt-front and his fingers.
Mingote had exercised every office that a person may engage in outside the boundaries of decency: he had been a usurer, a member of the police, leader of a claque, exchange broker, rural home agent, court officer, procurer....
Manuel had the opportunity of knowing him inside out. He was a past master in all the arts of deception,—an ingrate, impudent, cowardly with the brave and brave with cowards, as petulant and vain as few, fond of attributing to himself the bravery and merit that belonged to another, and of distributing among others the defects that were exclusively his own.
Manuel noticed that the baroness was always in the habit of speaking ill of Mingote, whenever that worthy was absent, and yet, when she listened to his chatter, she did so with evident pleasure. Doubtless she admired his subtlety and the rogue’s finesse in his evil arts.
After he had been speaking for some time his shameless conversation would become repellent.
Mingote’s chief preoccupation was to conceal his cynical nature, but his cynicism, through its very powers of expansion, oozed from his very soul, glittered in his eyes, flickered on his lips and flowed in his every word.
“Folks who insult me only waste their time,” he would declare, calmly. “When it comes to shamelessness, I can’t be beat.”