Manuel was discharged the following day.
"How shameful!" exclaimed the marchioness. "To oblige me to beg for a member of my own household! To have a servant who has been in my family for thirty years compel me to annoy my friends in such a manner!"
Antoñito and the count neither returned themselves nor sent the money back; yet were they urgently invited to sup with the marchioness. The viscount wrote a pamphlet on Pauperism in Families. Only the commandant handed Antoñito back the twenty pesetas on a day when he had won ten thousand reales with a single duro.
Poor Manuel found no friends in the hospital where he took refuge save the pious curé, Don Esteban, who, recalling that famous night, repeatedly said to him:
"Why, man, don't you know that nearly all the money that many persons give to the poor is only what they themselves have taken from them before?"
