Retiro,
they happened to see a white hearse in which was a child's coffin.
Maximina looked at it with an expression of deep pain, and watched it
until it disappeared from sight; then, with a gentle sigh, she
exclaimed;--

"Oh, how sorry it makes me feel for children that die!"

Miguel smiled and made no reply, reading her thoughts.

While time glided away in this sweet and delightful manner for our young
couple, Marroquin, the hairy Marroquin, was trying to accomplish his own
ends; the nation was over a volcano, and the former professor of the
Colegio de la Merced, secretly, and in company with our friend, Merelo y
Garcia, was not behindhand in stirring the flames of civil discord.

Not a night passed without both of them uttering bloody prognostications
for the future in the Cafe de Levante; the number of times that
institutions had been crumbled into dust on the marble tables was beyond
belief; the waiters, from listening to democratic discourses, served the
customers badly; more then once the secret police had visited the
establishment, so said the disturbers of the public peace; but there had
been no arrests, and this made Marroquin desperate. He enjoyed, beyond
measure, speaking so as to be heard of all who came to the table, at the
same time fastening his gaze on some peaceable customer, and making
tremendous boasts, so as to rouse his curiosity.

"Don Servando," he would shout to a gentlemen sitting some distance from
him, "do you expect to go out for a walk to-morrow?"

"Certainly, as always, Senor Marroquin."

"You had better not take your wife and children."

"Man alive! why not?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing! That is all I have to say."

But the revolutionary professor enjoyed most one evening when he
succeeded in bringing to the cafe; his old friend and colleague Don
Leandro.

Don Leandro's name was still on the faculty of the Colegio de la Merced,
which was no longer under the direction of the ex-captain of artillery,
but of the chaplain Don Juan Vigil. Don Leandro was the only one of the
old professors left, and this was because he was unhappy and patiently
endured the caprices of the chaplain, who now more than ever took
delight in tormenting him, and lavishing upon him the tremendous gifts
of sarcasm wherewith he was endowed by nature.

Marroquin met him one Sunday in the street, and after a hearty greeting,
as his custom was, he began to say harsh things of the cure, which was
also a habit of h