ed in fascination, taking care to keep
on the left. Tadeo the friend of judges and governors!

Tadeo named all the persons who arrived, when he did not know them
inventing titles, biographies, and interesting sketches.

"You see that tall gentleman with dark whiskers, somewhat squint-eyed,
dressed in black--he's Judge A ----, an intimate friend of the wife of
Colonel B ----. One day if it hadn't been for me they would have come
to blows. Hello, here comes that Colonel! What if they should fight?"

The novice held his breath, but the colonel and the judge shook hands
cordially, the soldier, an old bachelor, inquiring about the health
of the judge's family.

"Ah, thank heaven!" breathed Tadeo. "I'm the one who made them
friends."

"What if they should invite us to go in?" asked the novice timidly.

"Get out, boy! I never accept favors!" retorted Tadeo majestically. "I
confer them, but disinterestedly."

The novice bit his lip and felt smaller than ever, while he placed
a respectful distance between himself and his fellow townsman.

Tadeo resumed: "That is the musician H----; that one, the lawyer
J----, who delivered as his own a speech printed in all the books and
was congratulated and admired for it; Doctor K----, that man just
getting out of a hansom, is a specialist in diseases of children,
so he's called Herod; that's the banker L----, who can talk only of
his money and his hoards; the poet M----, who is always dealing with
the stars and _the beyond_. There goes the beautiful wife of N----,
whom Padre Q----is accustomed to meet when he calls upon the absent
husband; the Jewish merchant P----, who came to the islands with a
thousand pesos and is now a millionaire. That fellow with the long
beard is the physician R----, who has become rich by making invalids
more than by curing them."

"Making invalids?"

"Yes, boy, in the examination of the conscripts. Attention! That
finely dressed gentleman is not a physician but a homeopathist _sui
generis_--he professes completely the _similis similibus_. The young
cavalry captain with him is his chosen disciple. That man in a light
suit with his hat tilted back is the government clerk whose maxim
is never to be polite and who rages like a demon when he sees a hat
on any one else's head--they say that he does it to ruin the German
hatters. The man just arriving with his family is the wealthy merchant
C----, who has an income of over a hundred thousand pesos. But what
w