"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