The Fencing Master Read Online Free Page A

Everything else"—he brought his fist down hard on the table—"is nonsense."
    "But, my dear friend, there are evil men too," said Don Lucas mischievously, as if he had just caught Cárceles in his own trap.
    The journalist gave a disdainful, Olympian smile. "Of course. Who can doubt it? One has only to think of Narváez, who must be rotting in hell at this very moment, of González Bravo and his gang, of the court ... of any of the traditional obstacles. Fine. To take care of them, the French Revolution came up with a most ingenious device: a knife that goes up and down. That's how you get rid of obstacles, traditional and otherwise. And for the free, equal, sovereign people there is the light of reason and progress."
    Don Lucas was indignant. He was a gentleman, getting on to sixty, from a good family that had fallen on hard times, a bit of a snob with a reputation for misanthropy, and a widower with no children and no fortune. Everyone knew that he had not seen any real money since the reign of the late Fernando VII and that he lived on a tiny income and thanks largely to the charity of some kind neighbors. He was, nevertheless, very careful about keeping up appearances. His few suits of clothes were always meticulously ironed, and no one among his
acquaintances could but admire the elegance with which he tied his one tie and kept his tortoiseshell monocle firmly lodged in his left eye. He held reactionary views, defining himself as a monarchist, a Catholic, and, above all, a man of honor. He was always at daggers drawn with Agapito Cárceles.

    Besides Don Jaime, the other people present were Marcelino Romero, a piano teacher in a school for young ladies, and Antonio Carreño, a civil servant. Romero was an insignificant creature, tubercular, sensitive, and melancholy. His hopes of making a name for himself in the field of music had long since been reduced to teaching twenty or so young ladies from good society how to hammer out a reasonable tune on the piano. As for Carreño, he was a man of few words, a scrawny individual with red hair, a very neat copper-colored beard, and a rather austere expression. He pretended to be both a conspirator and a Mason, although he was neither.
    Don Lucas was tweaking his mustache, yellow with nicotine, and giving Cárceles a withering look.
    "You have, for the nth time," he said scathingly, "made your usual destructive analysis of the state of the nation. No one asked you for it, but we've had to put up with it. Fine. Doubtless tomorrow we will see it published in one of those libelous revolutionary rags that give your views a place in their propagandizing pages. Well, listen, my friend Cárceles. I, also for the nth time, say no. I refuse to go on listening to your arguments. Your solution to everything is a massacre. You'd make a fine minister of the interior. Remember what your beloved populace did in 1834. Eighty monks murdered by the rabble stirred up by conscienceless demagogues."
    "Eighty, you say?" Cárceles enjoyed baiting Don Lucas, as he did every day. "That seems rather on the low side to me. And I know what Fm talking about. Indeed I do. I know what the priesthood is like from the inside. What with the clergy and the Bourbons, there's not an honest man who can endure this country of ours."

    "You, of course, would apply your usual solutions."
    "I have only one: for priests and Bourbons, gunpowder and the gun. Fausto, bring us some more toast. Don Lucas is paying."
    "Oh, no, you don't." The worthy old man leaned back in his seat, his thumbs in his vest pockets, his monocle proudly fixed in position. "I buy toast only for my friends and only when Fm in funds, which is not the case today. But on no account would I buy anything for a treacherous fanatic like yourself."
    "I would rather be a treacherous fanatic, as you call me, than spend my life shouting, 'Long live oppression.'"
    The other members of the group felt it was time to mediate. Don Jaime called for calm, gentlemen,