were stored away among{21} perfumes, duly labeled and classified, events, names, dates, and even words. “This Señor de Febrero is an old record-book,” Doña Aurora would say. When there was a difference of opinion regarding the date of some past event, Don Gaspar was appealed to as umpire.
{21}
“Isn’t it true, Señor de Febrero, that the Zaldivar case, at Seville, was decided in the winter of ’56.”
“No, Señor, the winter of ’57. I remember it was on the 15th of December—I mean the 16th, the birthday of our friend Don Nicanor Candás.”
“But, good Heavens!” exclaimed Don Nicanor, when this was related to him. “It is not right that any one should be endowed with a memory like that. If that infernal Galician does not remember even the date of my birth, a thing that I can never remember myself! As nobody is going to steal any of my years away from{22} me, I don’t see the use of keeping so exact an account of them.”
{22}
Don Nicanor Candás, a retired Asturian, from Oviedo, suspicious and conceited like all his townspeople, as biting as pepper and as sharp as a thorn, afforded much amusement to the assemblage through his disputes with Señor de Febrero, whom he opposed systematically, without consideration for his patriarchal privileges or respect for his honorable seniority. The better to confound his adversary Candás adopted a singular method, which was not without humor. He pretended to be as deaf as a post, and he always carried in the pocket of his coat a little silver trumpet, which he put to his ear whenever he was able to answer and refute his opponent’s arguments, but which he would say he had forgotten to bring with him when, not being able to do this, he wished to change the subject of conversation. Such a stratagem{23} could not fail to succeed, and by the help of it he was always enabled to avoid being worsted in a dispute. In his language Señor de Candás was as rude and ill-bred as Don Gaspar was choice, polite and mellifluous, and for this reason he was out of harmony with the other habitués of the house. Nor was he so for this reason alone, but also because he was the only one of them who preferred the news of the day to reminiscences of the past, the only one who brought to this musty senate a breath of out-door air, of real life.
{23}
The portentous memory of the octogenarian grew confused and uncertain when recent events were concerned, and Candás, profiting by this defect in the admirable
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