were lazy barbarians."

"That we spent our time sunning ourselves, like the Bedouins."

"That we lived with the imagination."

"That's it; that we lived with the imagination."

"And that this city was precisely like a city in Morocco."

"Well! one has no patience to listen to those things. Where else
could he see (unless it might be in Paris) a street like the Calle
del Condestable, that can show seven houses in a row, all of them
magnificent, from Dona Perfecta's house to that of Nicolasita Hernandez?
Does that fellow suppose that one has never seen any thing, or has never
been in Paris?"

"He also said, with a great deal of delicacy, that Orbajosa was a city
of beggars; and he gave us to understand that in his opinion we live in
the meanest way here without being ourselves aware of it."

"What insolence! If he ever says that to me, there will be a scene in
the Casino," exclaimed the collector of taxes. "Why didn't they tell him
how many arrobas of oil Orbajosa produced last year? Doesn't the fool
know that in good years Orbajosa produces wheat enough to supply all
Spain, and even all Europe, with bread? It is true that the crops have
been bad for several years past, but that is not the rule. And the
crop of garlic! I wager the gentleman doesn't know that the garlic of
Orbajosa made the gentleman of the jury in the Exposition of London
stare!"