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Updated: June 8, 2025
"I'll tell a thing or two to the rascally fellow," replied Dona Casiana. "No. Take your time," answered the Biscayan. "We're going to give her and her gallant a fright. If he comes tonight, while they're talking, we'll tell the watchman to knock at the house door, and at the same time we'll all come out of our rooms with lights, as if we were going to the dining-room, and catch them."
The landlady told them that some one had died in the house and one of the drunkards, who was a student of medicine, said he would like to view the corpse. He was persuaded to change his mind and everybody went back to his place. The next day Manuel's sisters were notified and Petra was buried.... On the day after the interment Manuel left the boarding-house and said farewell to Dona Casiana.
"Senora, senora!" she called, several times. "Eh? What is it?" murmured Dona Casiana drowsily. "Perhaps you wish something?" "No, nothing. Oh, yes! Tell the baker tomorrow that I'll pay him the coming Monday." "Very well. Good-night." The servant was leaving the room, when the balconies of the house across the way lighted up.
When he was able to go out into the street again, he bought, at Petra's suggestion, a gold-plated brooch which he presented to Dona Casiana; she was so pleased with the gift that she told her servant the boy might remain in the house until he was completely recovered. Those days were among the most pleasant that Manuel ever spent in his whole life; the one thing that bothered him was hunger.
Dona Casiana continued to grumble, then ensconced her rotund person in the rocker and dozed off into a dream about an establishment of the same type as that across the way; but a model establishment, with luxuriously appointed salons, whither trooped in a long procession all the scrofulous youths of the clubs and fraternities, mystic and mundane, in such numbers that she was compelled to install a ticket-office at the entrance.
As they were about to shut themselves in, the neighbour surprised them and brought them, deeply contrite, into the presence of Dona Casiana. The thrashing that the landlady administered to her niece deprived the girl of all desire for new adventures and the aunt of any strength to administer another to Manuel.
Dona Casiana knew the meaning of resignation and her only solace in this life was a few volumes of novels in serial form, two or three feuilletons, and a murky liquid mysteriously concocted by her own hands out of sugared water and alcohol. This beverage she poured into a square, wide-mouthed flask, into which she placed a thick stem of anis. She kept it in the closet of her bedroom.
The landlady, Dona Casiana, who at the slightest occasion suspected the abandonment of the blind old woman, admonished the two maternally to gird themselves with patience; Dona Violante, after all, was not, like Calypso, immortal. But they replied that this toiling away at full speed just to keep the old lady in medicine and syrups wasn't at all to their taste.
And as this romantic hour glided on, the shouts and songs and quarrels of the street subsided; the lights in the balconies were extinguished; the shopkeepers and janitors drew in their chairs from the gutter to surrender themselves to the arms of sleep. In the chaste, pure dwelling of Dona Casiana the boarding-house keeper, idyllic silence had reigned for some time.
At the hour, whatever it was, that was marked by the twelve slow, raucous snores of the corridor clock, there were in the house only an old gentleman, an impenitent early-riser; the proprietress, Dona Casiana, a landlady equally impenitent, to the misfortune of her boarders, and the servant Petra.
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