Doña Fortuna strained herself with laughing. Don Dinero's face turned yellower with bile, but he had no remedy except to put his hand in his pocket and bring out an _onza_[19] to give the man.
The poor fellow was so full of joy that it leaped out of his eyes. He did not go for bread this time, but hurried to a dry-goods store to buy a few clothes for his wife and children. When he handed the _onza_ to pay for what he had bought, the dealer said, and stuck to it, that the piece was bad; that no doubt its owner was a coiner of false money, and that he was going to give him up to justice. On hearing this, the poor man was confounded, and his face became so hot that you might have toasted beans on it; but he took to his heels and ran to tell Don Dinero what had happened, weeping the while with shame and disappointment.
Doña Fortuna nearly burst herself with laughing, and Don Dinero felt the mustard rising in his nose.[20] "Here," said he to the poor man, "take these two thousand reals; your luck is truly bad; but if I don't mend it, my power is less than I think."
The man set off so delighted that he saw nothing until he flattened his nose against some robbers. They left him as his mother brought him into the world.
When his wife chucked him under the chin and said it was her turn, and it would soon be seen which had the more power, the petticoats or the breeches, Don Dinero looked more shame-faced than a clown.
She then went to the poor man, who had thrown himself on the ground and was tearing his hair, and blew on him. At the instant the lost dollar lay under his hand. "Something is something," he said to himself; "I'll buy bread for my children, for they have gone three days on half a ration, and their stomachs must be as empty as a charity-box."
As he passed before the shop where he had bought the clothes, the dealer called him in, and begged of him to overlook his previous rudeness; said that he had really believed the _onza_ to be a bad one, but that the assayer, who happened to stop as he passed that way, had assured him that it was one of the very best, rather over than under weight, in fact. He asked leave to return the piece, and the clothes besides, which he begged him to accept as an expression of sorrow for the annoyance he had caused him.