three regulation strokes. The watchman knocked with his pike at the
stores, one or two bakers passed with their bread, a shop was opened,
then another, then a vestibule; a servant threw some refuse out on the
sidewalk, a newsboy's calling was heard.

The author would be too bold if he tried to demonstrate the
mathematical necessity imposed upon Dona Casiana's house of being
situated on Mesonero Romanos Street rather than upon Olivo, for,
undoubtedly, with the same reason it might have been placed upon
Desengano, Tudescos or any other thoroughfare. But the duties of the
author, his obligation as an impartial and veracious chronicler compel
him to speak the truth, and the truth is that the house was on
Mesonero Romanos Street rather than on Olivo.

At this early hour not a sound could be heard inside; the janitor had
opened the vestibule-entrance and was regarding the street with a
certain melancholy.

The vestibule,--long, dingy, and ill-smelling,--was really a narrow
corridor, at one side of which was the janitor's lodge.

On passing this lodge, if you glanced inside, where it was encumbered
with furniture till no room was left, you could always make out a fat
woman, motionless, very swarthy, in whose arms reposed a pale weakling
of a child, long and thin, like a white earthworm. It seemed that
above the window, instead of "Janitor" the legend should have read:
"The Woman-Cannon and her Child," or some similar sign from the circus
tents.

If any question were addressed to this voluminous female she would