Maximina Part 9

IV.

Unusual silence reigned in the editorial rooms. Nothing was heard except the scratching of steel pens on paper. The editors were seated around a great table covered with oil-cloth; two or three, however, were writing at small pine tables, set in the corners of the room.

By and by one who had a beard just beginning to turn gray, raised his head, and said:--

"Tell me, Senor de Rivera, was not the motion determined upon for the eighteenth?"

Miguel, who was writing at one of the special tables, replied without lifting his head:--

"Senor Marroquin, I can't advise you too often to be more discreet. Try to realize that all our heads are in danger, from the humblest, like Senor Merelo y Garcia's, up to the most stately and glorious, like our very worthy chief's."

The editors smiled. One of them inquired:--

"And what has become of Merelo? He has not been here at all yet."

"He can't come till twelve," replied Rivera. "From ten till twelve he is always engaged in plotting against inst.i.tutions in the Cafe del Siglo."

"I thought that he was in Levante."

"No; he goes there last from two till three."

The first speaker was the very same Senor Marroquin of perpetual memory, Miguel's professor in the Colegio de la Merced, a born enemy of the Supreme Creator and a man as hirsute as a biped can possibly be. This was how he happened to be here:--

One day when Miguel was just finishing his breakfast, word was brought to him that a gentleman was waiting to see him in the library. This gentleman was Marroquin, who in his appearance resembled a beggar; he was so poor, dirty, and disreputable. When he saw his old pupil, he was deeply moved, strange as it may appear, and then told him with genuine eloquence that he had not a shilling, and that he and his children were starving to death, and at the end he begged him to find a place for him on the staff of _La Independencia_.

"I am not the owner of the journal, my dear Marroquin. The only thing that I can do for you is to give you a letter to General Count de Rios."

He gave him the letter, and Marroquin presented himself with it at the general's house; but he had the ill fortune to go at a most inopportune moment when the general was raging up and down through the corridors of his house, like one possessed, and calling up the repertoire of objurgations for which he had been so distinguished when he was a sergeant.

The reason was that one of his little ones had drunk up a bottle of ink, under the impression that it was Valdepenas. Whether oaths and invectives have any decisive influence upon events or not, we are unable to state; but the general used them with as much faith as though they had been a powerful antidote.

The victim was leaning his poor little head against the part.i.tion, shedding a copious flood of tears.

"What have you brought?" roared the count, casting a wrathful look upon Marroquin.

"This letter," replied the poor man, offering it with trembling hand.

"Vomit!" roared the general, with flaming eyes.

"What?" asked the professor, timidly.

"Vomit, child, vomit! or I will shake you out of your skin!" bellowed the ill.u.s.trious chief of Torrelodones, seizing his son by the neck....

"And what does the letter say?"

"It is from Senor Rivera, asking a position on _La Independencia_ for one who admires you."

"Can't you? Then put your fingers in your mouth!.... Senor Rivera knows perfectly well that there is no position vacant; everything is full, and I am tormented to death with applications.... Let me see you stuff your fingers in, you little rascal, or I will do it myself!"

Marroquin acted prudently, by quietly opening the door and slipping out.

Afterward Miguel spoke to the general at a more propitious moment and succeeded in getting Marroquin a place on the staff at a monthly salary of five hundred reales.[11]

Among the other editors of _La Independencia_ was an apostate and liberal priest who had let his beard grow long, and used to tell his friends secrets of the confessional when he had been drinking. He was one of Marroquin's intimates: both had the same grudge against the Divinity, and both were working enthusiastically to free humanity from its yoke. Nevertheless, one day he actually became ready to quarrel with the hirsute professor for turning the Eucharist into ridicule, which confirmed the former in his idea that "the priest was changing his views."

His name was Don Cayetano.

One other of the editors was a light-haired, handsome, and bashful young man, whose seat was in one of the corners of the room, and he lifted his head only when he overheard some brilliant sentence, for such things aroused his frantic admiration. His articles were always a mosaic of sonorous, t.i.tillating euphemisms, and adjectives, which formed a large proportion of Gomez de la Floresta's repertory: he played with them like a juggler; if any one desired to make him happy, he could find no easier way than by inventing some metaphor or making use of some harmonious adjective. Rivera, who knew this weakness of his, used to indulge him in it.

"This afternoon, gentlemen, I saw a woman whose glance was as bright as a Damascus blade."

Gomez de la Floresta's face would flush with pleasure, and he would look up with a smile of congratulation:--

"That means that it was a cold and cutting glance!"

"Her skin was smooth and brilliant with marble lines; her hair fell like a golden cataract upon her swan-like neck, which was bound around with a diamond necklace, brilliant as drops of light...."

"Drops of light! How felicitous that is, Rivera! how felicitous!"

"She was a woman capable of making life Oriental for a time."

"That is it! Taking refuge with her in a minaret, breathing the perfumes of Persia, letting her pearly fingers caress our locks, drinking from her mouth the nectar of delight!"

"I am delighted, Senor de Floresta, to see that you are consistent. Let us put a stop to it, nevertheless. You have been having an attack of phrases on the brain, and I fear a fatal termination."

The editor smiled in mortification and went on with his work.

A slender young man, with prominent cheek bones, almond-shaped eyes, and awkward gait, came in, making a great confusion, and humming a few strains of a waltz; he went up to the table where Miguel was writing, and giving him a slap on the shoulder, said, with a jolly tone:--

"_Hola_, friend Rivera!"

Miguel, without looking up, replied very solemnly:--

"Gently, gently, Senor Merelo! gently, we are not all on a level!"

The editors roared with laughter.

Merelo, a little touched, exclaimed:--

"This Rivera is always making jokes.... Now, senor, ..." he went on to say, flinging his sombrero on the table.... "I have just this moment come from the tariff meeting at the Teatro del Circo...."

"Who spoke?... Who spoke?" was asked from various parts of the room.

"Well, Don Gabriel Rodriguez, Moret y Prendergast, Figuerola, and our chief; but the one who made the best speech was Don Felix Bona."

"Man alive! and what did he say?"