ion from the jeweler
or insinuated to him a few ideas, with the hope that these would be
communicated to the Captain-General. To all the remedies suggested
Simoun responded with a sarcastic and unfeeling exclamation about
nonsense, until one of them in exasperation asked him for his opinion.

"My opinion?" he retorted. "Study how other nations prosper, and then
do as they do."

"And why do they prosper, Senor Simoun?"

Simoun replied with a shrug of his shoulders.

"The port works, which weigh so heavily upon commerce, and the port
not yet completed!" sighed Don Timoteo Pelaez. "A Penelope's web,
as my son says, that is spun and unspun. The taxes--"

"You complaining!" exclaimed another. "Just as the General has decreed
the destruction of houses of light materials! [35] And you with a
shipment of galvanized iron!"

"Yes," rejoined Don Timoteo, "but look what that decree cost me! Then,
the destruction will not be carried out for a month, not until Lent
begins, and other shipments may arrive. I would have wished them
destroyed right away, but--Besides, what are the owners of those
houses going to buy from me if they are all poor, all equally beggars?"

"You can always buy up their shacks for a trifle."

"And afterwards have the decree revoked and sell them back at double
the price--that's business!"

Simoun smiled his frigid smile. Seeing Quiroga approach, he left the
querulous merchants to greet the future consul, who on catching sight
of him lost his satisfied expression and assigned a countenance like
those of the merchants, while he bent almost double.

Quiroga respected the jeweler greatly, not only because he knew him
to be very wealthy, but also on account of his rumored influence
with the Captain-General. It was reported that Simoun favored
Quiroga's ambitions, that he was an advocate for the consulate,
and a certain newspaper hostile to the Chinese had alluded to him
in many paraphrases, veiled allusions, and suspension points, in the
celebrated controversy with another sheet that was favorable to the
queued folk. Some prudent persons added with winks and half-uttered
words that his Black Eminence was advising the General to avail himself
of the Chinese in order to humble the tenacious pride of the natives.

"To hold the people in subjection," he was reported to have said,
"there's nothing like humiliating them and humbling them in their
own eyes."

To this end an opportunity had soon presented its