This was what consoled him for his poverty; especially the necktie, which no one else in the whole district wore, and which he exhibited as a sign of supreme distinction, a species of golden fleece, as it were, of the huerta.
The people of the farm-houses respected Don Joaquín, though as regards the assistance of his poverty they were remiss and slothful. What that man had seen! How he had travelled over the world! Several times a railway employé; other times helping to collect taxes in the most remote provinces of Spain; it was even said that he had been a policeman in America. In short, he was a "somebody" in reduced circumstances.
"Don Joaquín," his stout wife would say, who was always the first to give him his title, "has never seen himself in the position he is in today; we are of a good family. Misfortune has brought us to this, but in our time we have made a mint of money."
And the gossips of the huerta, despite the fact that they sometimes forgot to send the two coppers for the instruction Saturdays, respected Don Joaquín as a superior being, reserving the right to make a little sport of his short jacket, which was green and had square tails; and which he wore on holidays, when he sang at high mass in the choir of Alboraya church.
Driven by poverty, he had landed there with his obese and flabby better-half as he might have landed anywhere else. He helped the secretary of the village with extra work; he prepared with herbs known only to himself certain brews which accomplished wonders in the farm-houses, where they all admitted that that old chap knew a lot; and without the title of schoolmaster, but with no fear that any one else would try to take away from him a school which did not bring in enough even to buy bread, he succeeded by much repetition and many canings, in teaching all the urchins of five or ten, who on holidays threw stones at the birds, stole fruit, and chased the dogs on the roads of the huerta, to spell and to keep quiet.
Where had the master come from? All the wives of the neighbours knew, from beyond the churrería. And vainly were further explanations asked, for as far as the geography of the huerta was concerned, all those who do not speak Valencian are of the churrería.
Don Joaquín had no small difficulty in making his pupils understand him and preventing them from being afraid of Castilian. There were some who had been two months in school and who opened their eyes wide and scratched the backs of their heads without understanding what the master who used words never heard before in his school said to them.
How the good man suffered! He who attributed all the triumphs of his teaching to his refinement, to his distinction of manners, to his use of good language, as his wife declared!
Every word which his pupils pronounced badly (and they did not pronounce one well), made him groan and raise his hands indignantly till they touched the smoky ceiling of his school-house. Nevertheless he was proud of the urbanity with which he treated his pupils.
"You should look upon this humble school-house," he would say to the twenty youngsters who crowded and pushed one another on the narrow benches, listening to him half-bored and half-afraid of his rattan, "as a temple of courtesy and good-breeding. Temple, did I say? It is the torch that shines and dissolves the barbaric darkness of this huerta. Without me, what would you be? Beasts, and pardon me the word; the same as your worthy fathers whom I do not wish to offend! But with God's aid you must leave here educated, able to present yourselves anywhere, since you have had the good fortune to find a master like me. Isn't that so?"