Page:Brazilian short stories.djvu/19

Rh down five or ten mil réis from his meagre salary so that there may be some margin by which some brother-in-law, graduated in medicine, can go to Europe on a commission to study the "zygomatic influence of the solar perihelion on the Zarathustrian system of Latin democracies."

And thus the army of postmen, more and more emaciated every day, head over heels in debt, covered with bruises, at the mercy of the December sun or the benumbing June drizzles, trots, trots, unceasingly, up hill and down dale, through mud-holes and sand-banks, whirlpools and slippery slopes, shaken up by the miserable mount that from so much suffering, poor thing, has lost all semblance of a horse. Its loins are but an open wound; the ribs a lath-work. This sorry caricature of the noble Equus, finally one day falls exhausted and famished in the midst of the journey. ' The postman throws the harness and the mail-bag over his shoulders and finishes the journey on foot. However, as on that day he arrives late, the post-office agent reports to headquarters regarding his "non-compliance with the rules." Headquarters get moving; a paper circulates about several rooms, where, comfortably sprawled out in expensive arm-chairs, the stout bureaucracy converses about German spies. After a long voyage the documets reach an office where a well-filled out-fellow, with good color, is seated at a mahogany desk smoking a confiscated cigar.

This one earns eight hundred mil réis per month, is son of someone, brother-in-law, father