"I am not the owner of the journal, my dear Marroquín. The only thing that I can do for you is to give you a letter to General Count de Ríos."
He gave him the letter, and Marroquín presented himself with it at the general's house; but he had the ill fortune to go at a most inopportune moment when the general was raging up and down through the corridors of his house, like one possessed, and calling up the repertoire of objurgations for which he had been so distinguished when he was a sergeant.
The reason was that one of his little ones had drunk up a bottle of ink, under the impression that it was Valdepeñas. Whether oaths and invectives have any decisive influence upon events or not, we are unable to state; but the general used them with as much faith as though they had been a powerful antidote.
The victim was leaning his poor little head against the partition, shedding a copious flood of tears.
"What have you brought?" roared the count, casting a wrathful look upon Marroquín.
"This letter," replied the poor man, offering it with trembling hand.
"Vomit!" roared the general, with flaming eyes.
"Vomit, child, vomit! or I will shake you out of your skin!" bellowed the illustrious chief of Torrelodones, seizing his son by the neck.... "And what does the letter say?"
"It is from Señor Rivera, asking a position on _La Independencia_ for one who admires you."
"Can't you? Then put your fingers in your mouth!.... Señor Rivera knows perfectly well that there is no position vacant; everything is full, and I am tormented to death with applications.... Let me see you stuff your fingers in, you little rascal, or I will do it myself!"
Marroquín acted prudently, by quietly opening the door and slipping out. Afterward Miguel spoke to the general at a more propitious moment and succeeded in getting Marroquín a place on the staff at a monthly salary of five hundred reales.[11]
Among the other editors of _La Independencia_ was an apostate and liberal priest who had let his beard grow long, and used to tell his friends secrets of the confessional when he had been drinking. He was one of Marroquín's intimates: both had the same grudge against the Divinity, and both were working enthusiastically to free humanity from its yoke. Nevertheless, one day he actually became ready to quarrel with the hirsute professor for turning the Eucharist into ridicule, which confirmed the former in his idea that "the priest was changing his views."