of
the greater despot; it is impossible to them to maintain themselves by
themselves."

Gabriel was silent for some time; he was suffocating, his chest was
heaving with the spasms of his hollow cough. The Chapel-master drew
near alarmed.

"Do not be uneasy," said Luna, recovering himself; "it is so every
day. I am ill and I ought not to talk so much, but these things excite
me, and I feel irritated by the absurdities of the monarchy and
religion, not only in this country, but all over the world. But,
notwithstanding, I have felt real pity, profound commiseration for a
being with royal blood. Can you believe it? I saw him quite close in
one of my journeys through Europe. I do not know how the police
who guarded his carriage did not drive me away, fearing a possible
attempt, but what I felt was compassion for the kings who have come
so late into a world that no longer believes in the divine right; and
these last twigs, sprouting from the worm-eaten and rotten trunk of a
dynasty, carry in their poor sap the decay of the rotten branches. It
was a youth, as sick as I am, not by the chances of life, but weakly
from his cradle, condemned before his birth to suffer from the malady
that came to him with his life. Just imagine, Don Luis, if at this
time for the preservation of my own interests I begot a son, would it
not be a coldly premeditated attempt against the future?"

And the revolutionist described the young invalid: his thin body,
artificially strengthened by hygiene and gymnastics, his eyes heavy
and sunk deep in their sockets, the lower jaw hanging loose like that
of a corpse, wanting the strength that keeps it fixed to the skull.

"Poor youth! Why was he born? What would be accomplished in his
journey through the world? Why had Nature, who so often refuses
fecundity to the strong, shown herself prodigal to the loveless union
of a dying consumptive? What was the use to him of having carriages
and horses, liveried servants to salute him, and ninnies to give him
food; it would have been far better had he never appeared in the world
but had remained in the limbo of those who are never born. Like the
squire of Don Quixote, who finding himself at last in the plenty of
Barataria, had by his side a doctor Recio to restrain his appetite,
this poor creature could never enjoy with freedom the pleasures of the
remains of life left to him."

"They pay him thousands of duros," added Gabriel, "for every minute of
his life, b