in-law or son-in-law of someone else, begins work at eleven in the morning and leaves at three with an interval in between to take a cup of chocolate at the café on the corner. The fatted pig glances over the paper with lazy, listless eyes and grunts:
"These postmen! What vagabonds they are!"
And signs the dismissal of the culprit for the good of the public service.
The poor tortured man, turned out, without health, without a horse, without flesh, full of debts, his insides dislocated by the shaking up on horseback, finds himself surrounded by creditors, hungry as vultures around a slaughter-house. As he is completely cleaned out, he is unable to pay any of them and, therefore, becomes known as a swindler.
"He seemed an honest man and nevertheless robbed me of five measures of corn," says the grocer, a fat man from Calabria, who became rich circulating bogus money.
"He borrowed one hundred mil réis from me for a horse, at a small friendly interest (three per cent per month) five years ago, and all he could pay me was the little premium and the harness as part payment. What a thief!" said the money-lender, partner of the other in the circulation of bogus money.
The dry-goods shop lamented the loss of a pair of cotton trousers sold on credit to the postman some time ago. The drug-store bewailed two pounds of adulterated Epsom salts. And the martyr, steeped in insults, only sees one way out of it: to take to his feet and run
