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SAN ANTONIO 207
shone very warmly, he would get up and hobble down
to see us. Then Beppa would bang at the ceiling of
her k’tchen and shout: “Don Martin, little Pedrico is
here.”’, and I ran downstairs. He sat crouched and
coughing over the brazier, holding an extinguished
cigarette butt in one of the corners of his mouth. But
this was only for the sake of appearances, for Pedro
could no longer afford to smoke. He had become
faded and decrepit. His clothes were dirty and neg-
lected; yet there was a certain nobility about him. He
fixed his dull eyes affectionately on me and again and
again spoke of the miraculous disposition of Provi-
dence that had enabled us to meet again. Sometimes
he addressed me as tu, with the effect of a caress.
Suddenly he would become animated:
“How did you succeed in sending me a letter from
Seville to my new address? Nobody knows Pedro
Rebollo so far away from here.” He likes to repeat
this question, and I answer, half as a joke:
“Of course they know you in Seville. Aren’t you an
employee of the King? The idea!”
“No, certainly not!’ he would say as his furrowed
face twinkled with delight. “I am nothing but an over-
seer, that’s all. No doubt I was once a goldsmith and
had a big business of my own; but that was many years
ago and no one knows of that. No, I simply cannot
understand how you got my address.”
“What, I simply looked into the Granada Directory
in a public library!”
“But only well-known people have their names in
that book, don’t I know that?”
“Of course, Don Pedro!”
“T don’t understand it, I don’t!” he would repeat,
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