Page:The Devil's Mother-in-Law And Other Stories of Modern Spain (1927).djvu/32

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FRIENDS TO THE POOR
29

Manuel was discharged the following day.

"How shameful!" exclaimed the marchioness. "To oblige me to beg for a member of my own household! To have a servant who has been in my family for thirty years compel me to annoy my friends in such a manner!"

Antoñito and the count neither returned themselves nor sent the money back; yet were they urgently invited to sup with the marchioness. The viscount wrote a pamphlet on Pauperism in Families. Only the commandant handed Antoñito back the twenty pesetas on a day when he had won ten thousand reales with a single duro.

Poor Manuel found no friends in the hospital where he took refuge save the pious curé, Don Esteban, who, recalling that famous night, repeatedly said to him:

"Why, man, don't you know that nearly all the money that many persons give to the poor is only what they themselves have taken from them before?"