Commissions called us into the town, and we slunk along the streets, spying for a portly form. But upon our return we met it, coming out of Antonio's house. Our Fate could not be avoided, so we asked him in to a simple lunch, at which we put before him, amongst other things, a large dish of especially selected olives which we had bought to take back with us to England. The zapatero approved so much of our taste in olives that, to our dismay, he almost finished up our store; and in consequence we had to waste more of our precious time in buying a new supply. We might indeed have saved ourselves the trouble: we were fated to reach England without olives, for the bottle holding them was afterwards forgotten and left in a railway waiting-room. After lunch we dismissed the zapatero, hinting to him as broadly as we could that we now had a lot to do, but that we would be delighted to see him at about seven o'clock, by which time our business would be over.
However, when at three o'clock we called at Antonio's house to bring him to the lawyer's office at which the power of attorney was to be signed, the zapatero was sitting comfortably in one of the rocking-chairs awaiting our arrival. We suggested to him that we had business to attend to. He replied that he would accompany us into the town.
So Antonio, the clerk, the zapatero, Jan and I set out for the lawyer's office. We had expected the bootmaker to leave us on the threshold, but he stalked gravely in our rear, and introduced himself to the lawyer's clerks as a friend of the family. The lawyer's office was a large apartment with a black and white tiled floor, at one end of which was the clerk's table and at the other that of the lawyer. He was a thick-set man covered with a huge golfing cap in loud checks. Over his head was suspended from the ceiling, with outstretched wings, a stuffed and dilapidated eagle from which generations of moth had stolen all hint of beauty. We discovered that this eagle, in some form or another, is the recognized trademark of the lawyer. One is tempted to wonder if this bird of prey hovers thus emblematically over the head of the man of law as a sort of symbolic warning to the simple-minded peasants.