s listening in disdainful condescension to
_tio_ Gori, an old ship-carpenter from down the beach, who had been
going to that cafe every afternoon for twenty years, to read the
newspaper aloud, advertisements and all, to a greater or smaller number
of sailors, according to the chance offshore; and the men would sit
there silent and attentive till nightfall.

"So then, if you are ready, gentlemen ... _Sinor_ Segasta has something
to say to us to-day...."

But _tio_ Gori held up his reading to observe to the man next to him:

"That Segasta is a humbug, you know!"

And with that comprehensive annotation, he adjusted his spectacles, and
the Premier's speech in the Cortes began to unwind, syllable by
syllable, from under the carpenter's white tobacco-stained mustache:

"Gen-tle-men-of-the-Cham-ber!
In-re-ply-to-what-the-Hon-o-ra-ble-De-pu-ty-said-yes-ter-day...."

But before getting to the reply, the carpenter again looked up from his
paper and, with a smile of canny superiority, observed to his speechless
expectant audience:

"That is a d---- d lie!"

Though the Rector had also spent whole afternoons at the feet of that
man of letters, he now failed to notice _tio_ Gori at all. Respectfully
and obediently, he advanced, instead, directly toward his uncle, who had
gone so far as to take the pipe out of his mouth to call to his nephews
with an: "Hey there, boys!" and motion to them to take the chairs he had
been keeping for his influential friends. Tonet sat down with his back
to his brother and uncle, so as to follow the fast game of dominoes that
was rattling in a lively fashion at the next table. At times his eyes
would wander off through the smoky atmosphere toward the bar, where the
pretty daughter of _tio_ Carabina--for him the principal attraction of
the cafe--was serving drinks under a line of marine chromos.

_Senor_ Mariano _el Callao_--though no one dared use that last epithet
in his hearing--was getting on toward sixty, but was still a muscular
and rather handsome man, with a weather-beaten face, blood-shot eyes, a
gray mustache as stiff and long and prickly as a tom-cat's whiskers, and
the general bullying air of an uneducated lout who had money enough to
live on without working. People had dubbed him _el Callao_ because at
least a dozen times every day he told the story of that famous battle
for the Peruvian seaport--the last that Spain relinquished in South
America--which he had witnessed as an ordinary