But the youth of Orbajosa did not spend all their time in the Casino,
as evil-minded people might imagine. In the afternoons there were to be
seen at the corner of the cathedral, and in the little plaza formed
by the intersection of the Calle del Condestable and the Calle de la
Triperia, several gentlemen who, gracefully enveloped in their cloaks,
stood there like sentinels, watching the people as they passed by. If
the weather was fine, those shining lights of the Urbs Augustan culture
bent their steps, still enveloped in the indispensable cloak, toward
the promenade called the Paseo de las Descalzas, which was formed by
a double row of consumptive-looking elms and some withered bushes
of broom. There the brilliant Pleiad watched the daughters of this
fellow-townsman or that, who had also come there for a walk, and the
afternoon passed tolerably. In the evening, the Casino filled up again;
and while some of the members gave their lofty minds to the delights of
monte, others read the newspapers, while the majority discussed in the
coffee-room subjects of the various kinds, such as the politics, horses,
bulls, or the gossip of the place. The result of every discussion was
the renewed conviction of the supremacy of Orbajosa and its inhabitants
over all the other towns and peoples on the face of the earth.

These distinguished men were the cream of the illustrious city; some
rich landowners, others very poor, but all alike free from lofty
aspirations. They had the imperturbable tranquillity of the beggar who
desires nothing more so long as he has a crust of bread with which to
cheat hunger, and the sun to warm him. What chiefly distinguished the
Orbajosans of the Casino was a sentiment of bitter hostility toward
all strangers, and whenever any stranger of note appeared in its august
halls, they believed that he had come there to call in question the
superiority of the land of the garlic, or to dispute with it, through