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"It seems impossible that you are as dull as you appear; there is more, perhaps, than meets the eye. Your friendship with the Escobars broke up very suddenly; and you never see Floret and Quintara with his borrowed French airs. They are nothing, it is true, yet they have a little Castilian, they are better than the avaricious fools at the United States Club.
It was Tirso who excitedly called their attention to one of the new volantas in which sat La Clavel. Ceaza y Santacilla was not with her; the place at her side was occupied by the man to whom Jaime had spoken about the dancer in the Tuileries. Quintara, capturing his attention, spoke in his profoundest manner. There was a halt in the movement of carriages, and La Clavel was directly before them.
An uproar of applause rose from the theatre, a confusion of cries, of Olé! Olé! Anda! Anda! Chiquella! A flight of men's hats sailed like birds around her. Jaime Quintara pounded his cane until it broke, and, with the others, Charles shouted his unrestrained Spanish approbation. They crowded into the front of the box, intent on every movement, every aspect, of the dancer.
At the same time he was slightly impatient: his faith in the dangers of Havana had been shaken by the city's aspect of profound placidity, its air of unalloyed pleasure. "You should know my friends," Andrés went on conversationally; "Remigio Florez, they are great coffee planters, and Jaime Jaime Quintara and Tirso Labrador. They will welcome you, as I."
It would not do to drop his widely advertised habits too suddenly; he could not, in a day, change from a rake to a serious student of such books as Machiavelli's Prince; and he prepared, with utter disgust, for his final bow in the cloak of dissipation. Purely by accident he met, at the Plaza de Toros, Jaime Quintara, Remigio Florez and Andrés.
Then, at attention, the gun of El Morro sounded, and the band swept into the strains of Philemon et Baucis. Jaime Quintara smiled sceptically at Charles' periods: Platonic sentiments might satisfy Abbott, he declared, but for himself.... At this, Remigio insisted on their moving out to inspect the carriages.
As for the others, that dandy, Quintara, and Remigio Florez, who looks like a coffee berry from their plantation at Vuelta Arriba, and Escobar, I am very much in their debt I bring the gold and they provide the pleasures of Havana. They are my runners. I haven't the slightest interest in their politics; if they support the Revolution or Madrid, they keep all that out of my knowledge."
Yet, in spite of the dark texture of their minds, they were, at times, casually happy, intent, together, on mundane affairs. They were, all five, inseparable: Jaime Quintara, the eldest, was even more of an exquisite than Andrés; he imported his lemon-colored gloves by the box from Paris, where they were made to his measure; and in them, it was the common jest, he went to bed.
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