see a page carry a telegram to
the President of the Council of Ministers. The President opened it, read
it carefully, and crumpled it in his hands with a frown, and then walked
along with slow step to the lobby. Merelo was all alive, and followed
him with ears alert, with eager eyes, and quivering nostrils. The
President went to the wash-room. Merelo waited patiently. The President
came out. Then Merelo's brain underwent a sudden and terrible
revolution; he hesitated a moment whether or not to follow him back;
but at that instant he was inspired by one of those thoughts that
illuminate the records of journalism; instead of following his quarry,
he darted like a flash into the wash-room, looked, and hunted, and
hunted.... At last, in an obscure spot, he found a bit of crumpled blue
paper. He had no hesitation in pulling it out.

That evening _La Independencia_ printed the following:--

"It seems that the preconization of the bishop-elect of Malaga, Senor
N----, first cousin of the President of the Council of Ministers, meets
with opposition in Rome."

The President read this notice as he was going to bed, and he was
greatly surprised, as he afterwards confessed to his friends, because
the report of the Pope's opposition to his cousin's confirmation had
been telegraphed to him by the ambassador. Racking his memory, he
recalled the fact that that afternoon, after reading the telegram, he
had been followed along the lobby of Congress by a shadow, and that the
shadow was waiting when he had come out of the wash-room. The President
instantly guessed how the cat was let out of the bag, and burst into a
roar of laughter. "That was a good joke," he exclaimed, as he put out
the light.

V.

Utrilla had gone to bed, feverish and nervous. And it was with very good
reason. For the second time he had failed to pass his examination; he
was as good as expelled from the Military Academy.[14]

His prescient heart had told him before the examination: "Jacobo, they
will certainly ask you about the pendulum, and that is the very thing
in which you are weakest!"

And indeed he had scarcely taken his seat before the tribunal, when,
_zas_! the professor of physics said to him in a wheedling accent:--

"Senor Utrilla, have the goodness to explain for us the theory of the
pendulum."

The cadet, rather pale, arose and looked with wild eyes at the
professor's desk.... The algebra professor smiled ironically, as though
he divine