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"Don't you understand? I am thinking only of your own good. If you live under hygienic conditions, with plenty of air and light, you will have less sickness, and lose less time from your work. Life will be that much easier for you, anyway."
But the man did not understand. If they were satisfied, why force on them something they did not ask for? They lived like pigs? Well, had they ever lived any other way? Hygiene and air were all right for rich people. But poor folks had always gotten along without air; and as for hygiene,--what was hygiene anyway but some new fad of the white-collared crowd? Anyway, if poor people had a hard life, the rich needn't try to improve it with their uplift. Everybody knew only too well what rich people were like. If they were easy with you one moment, it was only to take it out on you at some other time. Mr. Landlord could leave them alone with his lower rents and his remodelled tenements. They wouldn't have the lower rents, and they wouldn't move a stick or stone out of there.
The Galician looked defiantly at Monsalvat as he talked. His auditors, evidently a majority of the tenants in the building, loudly applauded his concluding words.
"He's right! He's right!"
As he walked toward his lodgings, he tried to convince himself that this incident was not a proper cause for discouragement; that, on the contrary, it emphasized the need of going on, of struggling with these people, even against their wills, for their own good. Their ignorance was the natural consequence of such absorbing poverty. When had culture ever existed apart from a certain amount of material wellbeing? And how really poor in every sense were these unfortunate tenants of his; their minds dulled by the grind of daily toil, their vision blurred to the most obvious beauties of life. It was understandable, indeed, that they should mistrust everything, even the best intentions of people who really had their welfare at heart. But he was sure of his road now; all doubt and faltering had left him. The difficulties he encountered only spurred him to new energy and a light was shining in his heart.
He had reached the steps leading up to his house when someone, from a carriage window, beckoned to him to stop. It was Ruiz de Castro, smart, dapper, gloved and perfumed as usual, bearing himself with his customary correctness and as always looking quite the conqueror. And following him out of his conveyance came Ercasty, who greeted Monsalvat with an affected courtesy quite in contrast with his obvious annoyance at this encounter.
"My dear fellow," Ruiz exclaimed, "you have no idea what an uproar you caused the other night. I have been busy apologizing for you ever since." And he laughed with his characteristic mannerliness, trying to appear amused as though it were all a joke. The doctor, however, eyed Monsalvat with aggressive hauteur, gazing skyward with intentional rudeness, whenever Fernando began to speak.
"Certainly it would never have occurred to anyone but Fernando Monsalvat to defend those women seriously." Castro continued: "All the ladies have decided you must be the wildest libertine in Buenos Aires. Something of a reputation, eh?"
"The injustice of such an inference must be rather obvious," said Monsalvat. "It offends me, however, only in the abstract, as something wrong, and therefore ugly. So far as I am concerned personally, it is nothing to me at all.
"I shall continue being what I am--regardless of what people think." The doctor, much annoyed, suddenly abandoned his passive attitude. It was incompatible with his veneration for "society" to admit that an individual could be other than what "society" declared him to be.
"That is sheer nonsense," he broke in aggressively. "What counts is public opinion. A man is, in any practical sense, exactly and only what people consider him to be."
Monsalvat took no notice of the interruption.
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