"Listen, look! the third from the right, the little girl—the one in the yellow shawl!"
"I see her. What about her?" said his friend in a sour voice.
"Look at her closely. Who does she look like? Who does she remind you of?"
Cotoner answered with a grunt of indifference. She probably looked like her mother. What did he care about such resemblances. But his astonishment aroused him from his quiet when he heard Renovales say he thought her a rare likeness of his wife, and was indignant at him because he did not recognize it.
"Why, Mariano, where are your eyes?" he exclaimed with no less sourness. "What resemblance is there between that scraggly girl with her starved face and your poor, dead wife. If you see a sorry-looking bean pole you will give it a name, Josephina,—and there's nothing more to say."
Although Renovales was at first irritated at his friend's blindness, he was finally convinced. He had probably deceived himself, as long as Cotoner did not find the likeness. He must remember the dead woman better than he himself; love did not disturb his memory.
But a few days later he would once more besiege Cotoner with a mysterious air. "I have something to show you." And leaving the company of the merry lads who annoyed his old friend, he would take him to a music hall and point out another scandalous woman who was kicking a fling or doing a danse du ventre, and revealed her anemic emaciation under a mask of rouge.
"How about this one?" the master would implore, almost in terror as if he doubted his own eyes. "Don't you think she looks something like her? Doesn't she remind you of her?"
His friend broke out angrily:
"You're crazy. What likeness is there between that poor little woman, so good, so sweet and so refined, and this low creature?"