{43}
{44}
IV.
The whole street—shopkeepers, peddlers, servants, and inhabitants—all knew Rogelio; as the saying is, every one had some account to settle with him. He was familiar with all the establishments, or rather, the modest little shops for the sale of crockery, imported provisions, novelties, cordage and periodicals, interspersed among the ancient and imposing ancestral houses of the Calle Ancha, which was animated by the presence of the students and by the passing up and down of the street cars.
The
But those with whom Rogelio was most intimate were the drivers of the hackney coaches, of which there was a stand in the little square of Santo Domingo. Doña Aurora seldom went out{45} that a twinge of her rheumatism or the cold or the heat did not decide her to send for one of those vehicles, so shabby in appearance but so comfortable and convenient. She called them, emphatically, her “equipages,” and declared laughingly that her coach stood always waiting at the door with so punctual a driver that he had never once kept her waiting. Rogelio, as the only son of wealthy parents, indulged in a more luxurious mode of conveyance; his mother allowed him to keep a dashing brougham and a pair of spirited horses at the livery stable of Augustin Cuero, so that on feast days he might drive in the Retiro, or wherever he might like. She would not consent to his keeping a saddle horse, through fear of an accident. But nothing in the world would have induced Señora Pardiñas herself to make use of that toy equipage. She was perfectly satisfied with her quiet hacks. Except on some special occasion{46}—to make visits of ceremony or the like—she cared not a jot whether her carriage had a little extra varnish or her coachman wore gloves or a goat-skin cape. Owing to the frequency with which she employed them and to judicious tips all the drivers of the square were devoted to Doña Aurora, as well as greatly attached to the Señorito, though he loved to torment them, especially his compatriots, the Galicians, whom he was never tired of teasing. He ridiculed their native land, he sang the Muñeira for them, he spoke to them in the Galician dialect, like the servants in Ayála’s comedies, and if by a miracle they were vexed, he would say:
{45}
{46}
“I too, swift charioteer, am a Galician, a Galician of the Galicians.”
To which they would
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