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“What are you doing here?” asked the journalist, eyeing him from top to toe. “Who are you?”

“I’m Manuel, Petra’s son. The woman who worked at the boarding-house. Don’t you remember?”

“Ah, yes!... And what do you want?”

“I’d like you to tell me whether you know where Don Roberto lives. I believe he’s now a writer for the newspapers.”

“And who is Don Roberto?”

“That blonde chap.... The student who was a friend of Don Telmo’s.”

“Oh, that lit’r’y kid?... How should I know?”

“Not even where he works?”

“I think he is an instructor at Fischer’s academy.”

“I don’t know where that academy is.”

“It seems to me it’s on the Plaza de Isabel II,” replied the Superman sullenly, as he opened the glass door with a latch-key and walked inside.

Manuel hunted up the academy. Here an attendant informed him that Roberto lived in the Calle del Espíritu Santo, at number 21 or 23, he could not say exactly which, on a top floor, where there was a sculptor’s studio.

Manuel sought out the Calle del Espíritu Santo; the geography of this section of Madrid was somewhat hazy to him. It took him a little time to locate the street, which at this hour was thronged with people. The market-women, ranged in a row on both sides of the thoroughfare, cried their kidney-beans and their tomatoes at the top of their lungs; the maidservants tripped by in their white aprons with their baskets on their arms; the dry-goods clerks, leaning against the shop-doors, swapped gossip with the pretty cooks; the bakers threaded their way hurriedly through the maze, balancing their baskets upon their heads; and the coming and going of the crowd, the shouting of one and the other, merged into a medley of deafening sound and variegated, picturesque spectacle.