The judge of the lower court, the alcalde’s lady, and the dean of the cathedral now made their appearance.  They all saluted the engineer, manifesting in their words and manner, on seeing him, the satisfaction of gratified curiosity.  The judge was one of those clever and intelligent young men who every day spring into notice in official circles; aspiring, almost before they are out of the shell, to the highest political and administrative positions.  He gave himself airs of great importance, and in speaking of himself and of his juvenile toga, he seemed indirectly to manifest great offence because he had not been all at once made president of the supreme court.  In such inexpert hands, in a brain thus swollen with vanity, in this incarnation of conceit, had the state placed the most delicate and the most difficult functions of human justice.  His manners were those of a perfect courtier, and revealed a scrupulous and minute attention to all that concerned his own person.  He had the insufferable habit of taking off and putting on every moment his gold eye-glasses, and in his conversation he manifested with frequency the strong desire which he had to be transferred to Madrid, in order that he might give his invaluable services to the Department of Grace and Justice.

The alcalde’s lady was a good-natured woman, whose only weakness was to fancy that she had a great many acquaintances at the court.  She asked Pepe Rey various questions about the fashions, mentioning establishments in which she had had a mantle or a skirt made on her last journey to the capital, contemporaneous with the visit of Muley-Abbas, and she also mentioned the names of a dozen duchesses and marchionesses; speaking of them with as much familiarity as if they had been friends of her school-days.  She said also that the Countess of M. (famous for her parties) was a friend of hers and that in ’60 she had paid her a visit, when the countess had invited her to her box at the Teatro Real, where she saw Muley-Abbas in Moorish dress and accompanied by his retinue of Moors.  The alcalde’s wife talked incessantly and was not wanting in humor.

The dean was a very old man, corpulent and red-faced, plethoric and apoplectic looking, a man so obese that he seemed bursting out of his skin.  He had belonged to one of the suppressed religious orders; he talked only of religious matters; and from the very first manifested the most profound contempt for Pepe Rey.  The latter appeared every moment more unable to accommodate himself to a society so little to his taste.  His disposition—­not at all malleable, hard, and very little flexible—­rejected the duplicities and the compromises of language to simulate concord when it did not exist.  He remained, then, very grave during the whole of the tiresome evening, obliged as he was to endure the oratorical vehemence of the alcalde’s wife, who, without being Fame, had the privilege of fatiguing with a hundred tongues the ears of men.  If, in some brief respite which this lady gave her hearers, Pepe Rey made an attempt to approach his cousin, the Penitentiary attached himself to him instantly, like the mollusk to the rock; taking him apart with a mysterious air to propose to him an excursion with Senor Don Cayetano to Mundogrande, or a fishing party on the clear waters of the Nahara.