Doña Aurora had her daily reception--and in the afternoon; nothing less,
indeed, than a five o’clock tea, as a society reporter would say--only,
without the tea or the wish for it, for if she had offered anything to
her guests, the Señora de Pardiñas, who was very old-fashioned in her
ideas, would undoubtedly have selected some good slices of ham or the
like substantial nourishment. As her friends knew that she was
accustomed to go out only in the morning wrapped in her mantle and her
fur cape to make a few unceremonious calls or to do some shopping, and
that she spent her afternoons at her dining-room window knitting, they
attended these receptions punctually, attracted to them by the cheerful
fire, by the easy-chairs, by friendship, and by habit.
The larger part of the circle of Doña Aurora’s friends was composed of
the companions of her deceased husband, magistrates, or, as she called
them in professional parlance, “Señores.” Some few of these, who had
already retired from active official life, were the most constant in
their attendance. Certain seats in the dining-room were regarded as
belonging of right to certain persons--the broad-backed easy-chair was
set apart for Don Nicanor Candás, the Crown Solicitor, who loved his
ease; the leather-covered arm-chair with the soft seat was for Don
Prudencio Rojas; the arm-chair covered with flowered cretonne by the
chimney corner--let no one attempt to dispute its possession with the
patriarch Don Gaspar Febrero. This venerable personage was the soul of
the company, the most active, the most imposing in appearance, and the
[Illustration: “The broad-backed easy-chair was set apart for Don
Nicanor Candás.”]
gayest of the assemblage, notwithstanding his eighty odd years and his
lame leg, broken by jumping from a horse-car. The first quarter of an
hour’s conversation was generally devoted to a discussion of the weather
and the health of the company; there was not one of these worthy people
who was not afflicted with some ailment or other. Some of them, indeed,
were full of ailments, so that neither their complaints nor the remedies
they discussed were of merely abstract interest. There an account was
kept of the fluctuations in the chronic catarrhs, the rheumatic pains,
the flatulent attacks, and the heartburns of each one of the assemblage,
and they discussed as solemnly as they had formerly discussed a judgment
the virtues of salycilic acid or of pectoral lozenges.
The sanitary question being exhausted--for everything exhausts
itself--they passed on, almost always following the lead of Señor
Febrero, to treat of less agreeable matters. The amiable old man could
not bear to hear all this talk of drugs, prescriptions, and potions.
“Any one would suppose one had one foot in the grave,” he would say,
smiling and showing his brilliant artificial teeth. The subject of the
conversation was changed, but it scarcely ever turned on questions of
the day. Like a gavotte played by a grandmother on an antiquated
harpsichord, the ritornello of souvenirs and reminiscences of the past
resounded here. The conversation usually began somewhat as follows:
“Do you remember when I received my appointment to the Canary Islands
during the ministry of Narvaez?”
Or:
“What times those were! At least ten years before the celebrated
Fontanellas case. My eldest son was not yet born.”
Señor de Febrero interposed to restrain them in these sorrowful
reminiscences of bygone days also, exclaiming with youthful vivacity:
“Why, that took place only yesterday, as one might say. In the life of a
nation what is a paltry twenty-five or thirty years?”
“Yes, but in a man’s life----”
“Or in a man’s life either, if it comes to that. Forty or fifty I call
the prime of life.”
“Speak for yourself. You have discovered the elixir of youth. You are as
fresh as a lettuce. But the rest of us look like parchment; we are only
fit to be wheeled out in the sun.”
With his crutch between his knees Don Gaspar laughed, and as he shook
his head the silvery curls of his wig shone in the light. I regret to be
obliged to pay tribute to descriptive truth by stating that Señor de
Febrero wore a wig and false teeth; but it must be added that their
falseness was so true that they were superior to the genuine articles
and would deceive the sharpest eye. With exquisite taste and consummate
art, the old man had had his wig made of hair as white as snow, and the
coronet of light white curls that encircled his ivory brow was like a
majestic aureole, very different from the thick forest of hair with
which would-be young old men persist in striving to repair the
irreparable ravages of time. In the same way the teeth, skillfully
imitating his own, somewhat uneven and worn, with a gap on the left
side, would have deceived anybody. With his beautiful hair, his
smooth-shaven face, his regular and still very expressive features, with
his pulchritude and dignity of mien, Don Gaspar reminded one of the
heads of the eighteenth century as they have come down to us in
miniatures. It seemed a pity that he should not wear an embroidered
satin coat; the cloth coat did not suit him. Even the ebony crutch, with
its blue velvet cushion, served to enhance and complete the commanding
dignity of his presence. With the gallantry of a bygone age, Don Gaspar,
the moment a woman appeared in sight, was all ardor, and honied speeches
flowed from his lips. Even to Señora Pardiñas, who was altogether out
of the lists, he did not neglect to pay attentions that were lover-like
and gallant, rather than merely polite.
It gratified the vanity of this old man, who wore his old age so
serenely and so gracefully, to hear his companions, all infirm, all
asthmatic, all with their chronic colds and coughs, all visibly bald,
say of him enviously:
“This Don Gaspar is wonderful. He will live to bury us all.”
It was also a gratification to his vanity to prove to them the strength
and clearness of his memory, and it was one which he often enjoyed, for
at the reception of the Señora de Pardiñas the thread of memory was
constantly spun, and intermingled with it was a strand of gold, but of
tarnished gold like that of an antique chasuble. Don Gaspar’s memory was
a sort of wardrobe in which were stored away among perfumes, duly
labeled and classified, events, names, dates, and even words. “This
Señor de Febrero is an old record-book,” Doña Aurora would say. When
there was a difference of opinion regarding the date of some past event,
Don Gaspar was appealed to as umpire.
“Isn’t it true, Señor de Febrero, that the Zaldivar case, at Seville,
was decided in the winter of ’56.”
“No, Señor, the winter of ’57. I remember it was on the 15th of
December--I mean the 16th, the birthday of our friend Don Nicanor
Candás.”
“But, good Heavens!” exclaimed Don Nicanor, when this was related to
him. “It is not right that any one should be endowed with a memory like
that. If that infernal Galician does not remember even the date of my
birth, a thing that I can never remember myself! As nobody is going to
steal any of my years away from me, I don’t see the use of keeping so
exact an account of them.”
Don Nicanor Candás, a retired Asturian, from Oviedo, suspicious and
conceited like all his townspeople, as biting as pepper and as sharp as
a thorn, afforded much amusement to the assemblage through his disputes
with Señor de Febrero, whom he opposed systematically, without
consideration for his patriarchal privileges or respect for his
honorable seniority. The better to confound his adversary Candás adopted
a singular method, which was not without humor. He pretended to be as
deaf as a post, and he always carried in the pocket of his coat a little
silver trumpet, which he put to his ear whenever he was able to answer
and refute his opponent’s arguments, but which he would say he had
forgotten to bring with him when, not being able to do this, he wished
to change the subject of conversation. Such a stratagem could not fail
to succeed, and by the help of it he was always enabled to avoid being
worsted in a dispute. In his language Señor de Candás was as rude and
ill-bred as Don Gaspar was choice, polite and mellifluous, and for this
reason he was out of harmony with the other _habitués_ of the house. Nor
was he so for this reason alone, but also because he was the only one of
them who preferred the news of the day to reminiscences of the past, the
only one who brought to this musty senate a breath of out-door air, of
real life.
The portentous memory of the octogenarian grew confused and uncertain
when recent events were concerned, and Candás, profiting by this defect
in the admirable faculties of the patriarch, was always trying to trip
him up. “Let us see,” he would say, “how our Don Gaspar would set about
proving an alibi. He is impregnable in all that relates to the
Calomarde ministry or the regency of Espartero, yet he does not remember
what he was doing this morning.” And imitating Don Gaspar’s voice, he
would add, “What did I do yesterday? Let me see. Did I go to see Rojas?
I think so. What am I saying? No, no. I was walking in Recoletos. Yet I
would not swear to that, either.”
This humorous criticism of the patriarch, might, to a certain extent, be
applied with equal justice to all the other “Señores.” It would seem as
if the present did not exist for them, as if the past only had life and
color. They discussed the news of the reporter, Don Nicanor, for a few
minutes with the pessimism that is characteristic of old age; then they
resumed their progress up the stream of time, plunging with supreme
satisfaction into the fogs of vanished years. Perhaps, along with old
age, they were influenced in this to some extent by the character
acquired in the practice of the law, a profession based on scientific
notions already stratified, a science purely historical, in which the
spirit of innovation is a heresy, and in which the judicial problems of
to-day are solved according to the standard of the Roman law or the
jurisdiction of the Visigoths. Thus it was that the reunions in the
house of the Señora de Pardiñas might be likened to a rock standing
motionless amid the ceaseless surge of the sea of life. The worthy
“Señores” did not see that among dusty and worm-eaten parchments, too,
living germs palpitate and the spirit of progress lives. Clinging to
vain formulas, they fancied they were the custodians of a sacred liquor,
when only the empty vase remained in their hands, and, treating of
innovations, they placed in the same category of heterodoxy the use of
the beard, inferior courts, trial by jury, and the revision of the
Codes.