ike the selfish donkeys they are!
Well, well! I can't believe I've been taken in this way! Isn't it a
joke? The best joke you ever heard! Ha, ha, ha! And I thought I knew the
world ...! Ha, ha! Ha, ha!..."

And her laugh was audible distinctly down in the square. It was a wild,
shrill, metallic laughter, that seemed to be rending her flesh! The
whole hotel was in commotion, while the actress, with foaming lips, fell
to the floor and began to writhe in fury, overturning the furniture and
bruising her body on the iron trimmings of her trunks.

PART THREE

I

"Don Rafael, the gentlemen of the Committee on the Budget are waiting
for you in the second section."

"I'll be there directly."

And the deputy bent low over his desk in the writing-room of the
Congress, went on with his last letter, adding one more envelope to the
heap of correspondence piled up at the end of the table, near his cane
and his silk hat.

This was his daily grind, the boresome drudgery of every afternoon; and
around him, with similar expressions of disgust on their faces, a large
number of the country's representatives were busy at the same task.
Rafael was answering petitions and queries, stifling the complaints and
acknowledging the wild suggestions that came in from the District--the
endless clamor of the voters at home, who never met the slightest
annoyance in their various paths of life without at once running to
their deputy, the way a pious worshipper appeals to the miracle-working
saint.

He gathered up his letters, gave them to an usher to mail, and
sauntering off with a counterfeit sprightliness that was more
counterfeit as he grew fatter and fatter with the years, walked through
to the central corridor, a prolongation of the lobby in front of the
_Salon de Conferencias_.

The Honorable senor don Rafael Brull, member from Alcira, felt as much
at ease as if he were in his own house when he entered that corridor,--a
dark hole, thick with tobacco smoke, and peopled with black suits
standing around in groups or laboriously elbowing their way through the
crowds.

He had been there eight years; though he had almost lost count of the
times he had been "duly elected" in the capricious ups and downs of
Spanish politics, which give to Parliaments only a fleeting existence.
The ushers, the personnel of the Secretariat, the guards and janitors,
treated him with deferential intimacy, as a comrade on a somewhat higher
level, but as m