Rafael soon wearied of this affair.  He did not like her manufactured beauty, nor her tiresome chatter that always turned on fashions.  She was always wanting money for herself and for her friends.  Rafael, as a wealthy miser, grew alarmed.  Remorsefully he thought of his children’s future, as if he were ruining them; and of what his economical Remedios would say of his considerably augmented expenditures.  Well he knew that Remedios haggled for everything down to the last centimo, and that her one extravagance was an occasional new shawl for the local Virgin, and an annual fiesta for the Saint with a large orchestra and hundreds of candles!  He broke off relations with the Galician boulevardiere, and found the rupture a sweet relief.  It seemed to remove a sully from the memory of his youthful passion.  Moreover, his Party had just returned to power and it was important to have no blemish on his standing as a “serious” person!  He resumed his seat on the Right, and near the Blue Bench this time, as one of the senior deputies.  The moment for work had come!  Now, it was time to see whether he could not make a position for himself with one good boost!

They named him to the Committee on the Budget, and he took it upon himself to refute certain strictures presented by the Opposition to the Government program on Pardon and Justice.  One friend he could count on was the minister:  a respectable, solemn marquis who had once been an Absolutist, and who, wearied of platonisms, as he put it, had finally “recognized” the liberal regime, without amending his former ideas, however.

Rafael was as nervous as a schoolboy on the eve of his first examinations.  At the library he studied everything that had been said on the subject by countless deputies in a century of Parliamentary government.  His friends in the Conference Chamber—­the legislative bohemia of “ex-honorables” and unsuccessful aspirants, who were loyal to him in gratitude for passes to the floor—­were encouraging him and prophesying victory.  They no longer approached him to begin:  “When I was auditor ...” to indulge in a veritable intoxication on the fumes of their past glory; no longer did they ask him what don Francisco thought of this, that, or the other thing, to draw their own wild inferences from his replies and start rumors going based on “inside information.”  Now, quite frankly, they “advised” him, giving him hints in accordance with what they had said or meant to say during that discussion of the budget back in Gonzalez Brabo’s time, to end by murmuring, with a smile that gave him the shudders:  “Well, anyhow, we’ll see!  Good luck to you!”