A Christian Woman. condesa de Emilia Pardo Bazán
amazement that a Portuguese should have so few surnames. He wanted to add at least, “Teixeira de Vasconcellos Palmeirim Junior de Santarem do Morgado das Ameixeiras,” so that it should be more in character. We got that out of his head, but his next idea was even worse. He surreptitiously laid hold of the pen and India ink, which I used for my drawings and my plans, and wrote carefully under “Miguel de los Santos Pinto” this appendage, “Corno de Boy” (Ox-horn). In order not to take the trouble of adding it to all the cards, he did so to twenty-five only, and hid the rest.
The next day the Portuguese went out to make some calls, and left ten or twelve of the cards at different places. The following Sunday he met an acquaintance in Arenal Street, who, half-choked with laughter, stopped him, saying, “Why, Don Miguel, is your name really Corno de Boy? Is there any such name in your country?”
“What do you mean?” said the embarrassed Portuguese. “Of course not; my name is simply Santos Pinto; nothing more.”
“Well, just look at this card.”
“Let me see, let me see!” murmured the poor man. “It really does say so!” he exclaimed in amazement, on reading the addition.
“The engraver must have made a mistake,” added his friend, jocosely.
But Don Miguel did not swallow that, and as soon as he reached the house showed the card to Botello, and demanded an explanation of the sorry jest. The big scamp so warmly protested that he was innocent, that he succeeded in diverting Don Miguel’s suspicions toward me.
“Don’t you see,” he said, “Salustio has the very pen and ink with which that was written, in his room now? Don’t trust those quiet people. Oh, these proper fellows!”
In consequence of this Macchiavellian scheme, the good-natured Portuguese singled me out for his jealous suspicion, although I had never meddled with him in my life. But I firmly believe that his blindness was voluntary, because he could not have had the slightest doubt in regard to some other malicious pranks that Botello perpetrated.
One day when he was playing dominoes with his victim, Botello managed to put a paper crown, with donkey’s ears, on the latter’s head, so that the nymph of the ironing-table might be convulsed with laughter, for she was watching the whole performance. Then, one day, he pinned long strips of paper upon his coat-tails, so that when he went out in the street all the street Arabs hooted at him. Nevertheless, the fondness of the Portuguese for Botello never failed. When Botello lacked money to pay for a ball ticket, he would go to Don Miguel and ask for half a dollar, and exhaust all his eloquence in trying to persuade him that he ought to go on a frolic also. When the Portuguese would refuse, making the excuse that he did not want to displease the washerwoman, Botello would retort, calling him a booby. As the Portuguese did not understand that word, and appeared somewhat offended, Botello would make a movement as if to return the half-dollar. “Take it, take it, if you are angry with me,” the sly youth would exclaim. “My personal dignity will not allow me to accept favors from any one who looks at me in that way. You are angry, aren’t you now?”
“I can never be angry with you,” the Portuguese would reply, putting the money into his hand by main force; then turning toward the rest of us who were witnessing this scene, he would say with the most kindly smile I have ever seen on any human countenance: “This rapacious rogue! But he is a great artist.”
Then he would go back to his place at the window, and strum on his guitar.
The reader must acknowledge that there was no opportunity for applying one’s mind to methodical, engrossing, and difficult study in a house where such scenes occurred every moment of the day. The bursts of laughter, alternating with frequent squabbles; the racing up and down the halls; the continual going in and out of lazy fellows who, not knowing how to kill time, endeavor to make the studious ones lose it; the irregularity of our meals; the confidential way we had of living in each other’s rooms; the being up all night, and getting out of bed at midday, did not greatly help a student to win distinction in the School of Engineering. On the other hand, the contagion of joking and mirth could not possibly be withstood at my age.
Other students boarded there; some attending the University, others the School of Mountain Engineering, and others the School of Architecture; but none of them was a prodigy of learning. Perhaps I was ahead of them all in diligent application to my studies; but as my subjects were very difficult, it turned out that I found myself put over to the September examinations that year. Consequently I was obliged to spend my vacation in Madrid, and was unable to enjoy the cool breezes of my home in the province.
That summer would have been wearisome indeed, and unbearable, if I had not been surrounded by such jolly and frolicsome people, and if the good-natured Portuguese had not afforded us such fun by submitting to the endless pranks of Botello.
When there was no other way of killing an afternoon, little Dumas would snap his fingers and say, throwing back his perspiring head so as to brush away the thick black mane, which was suffocating him:
“Let us play a trick on Corno de Boy. Who will help me catch some bugs?”
“Catch bugs?”
“Yes, just make a cornucopia and fill it with bugs to the top. The small ones will not do; they must be big ones.”
Then every one would go to his room to engage in the strange hunt. Unfortunately, it was not difficult. As soon as we searched under our beds, or our pillows, we would quickly collect a dozen or more fearful fellows. We would carry our tributes to the inventor of the practical joke, and he would put them all together. As soon as we knew that the Portuguese was in bed, we would take off our shoes, and, repressing our desire to laugh, would station ourselves at his door. As soon as Don Miguel began to snore, Botello would softly raise the latch, and, as the headboard was next the door, all that the imp of an artist had to do was to open the cornucopia and scatter the contents over the head and face of the sleeping man. After this was accomplished, Botello would close the door very quietly, while we, convulsed with laughter, and pinching one another in sheer excitement, would wait for the pitched battle to begin. Hardly two minutes would elapse before we would hear the Portuguese turn over in bed. Then we would hear broken and unintelligible phrases; then strong ejaculations; then the scratching of a match, and his astonished exclamation, “By Jove!”
We would come forward with great hypocrisy, inquiring whether he was sick or whether anything had happened. “By Jove!” the good man would exclaim; “pests here, and pests everywhere. By Jove! Ugh!”
The next day we would advise him to change his room; and he would do so, hoping to find some relief; but we would repeat the same performance.
So we managed to kill time during the dog-days, with these stupid practical jokes. What most surprised me was that the Portuguese, who was always the butt of them, never thought of changing his boarding-house nor even gave his persecutor a drubbing.
When I passed in my deficient subjects in September, I was obliged to exert all my energy and resolution in order to do what I thought the Portuguese should have done—that is, to change my boarding-house. The attraction of a gay and idle life, my pleasant intercourse with Botello, for whom it was impossible not to feel a compassionate regard, similar to tenderness; the very defects and inconveniences of that abode, made me much fonder of it than was expedient. But reason finally triumphed. “Life is a treasure too precious to be squandered in boyish pranks and stupid practical jokes,” I reflected, as I was packing up my effects preparatory to taking myself off somewhere else. “If that unfortunate Botello is an idle dreamer, and has made up his mind to fetch up in a public hospital, I, for my part, am determined to acquire a profession, take life seriously, and be my own lord and master. The people in this house are poor deluded mortals, destined to end in nameless wretchedness. I must go where one can work.”
Notwithstanding all this, my heart felt heavy when I took leave of them all. Pepa’s tears flowed freely at losing a good boarder who, she declared, always paid punctually and never gave her the slightest trouble. My eyes were not filled with tears, but I felt as much regret as though I were parting with some of my dearest friends, while I embraced Botello,