Page:Brazilian short stories.djvu/41

 For certain commissions there was no one like him. Such earnestness! Such subtleness! Such tact!

One day the Major, reprimanding the clerk, held up his diplomacy as an example.

"You great idiot! go learn with Pontes who has a knack for everything, and is amusing besides."

That day he invited Pontes to Dinner.

Pontes' soul was filled with joy: the fortress had opened its doors to him.

That dinner was the beginning of a series where the "chipmunk," now an indispensable factotum, found a first-class field of action for his tactics.

Major Bentes, however, possessed one invulnerable point: he never laughed, he limited his hilarity to ironical smiles. A joke that would make the other guests rise from the table smothering their mouths in their table-napkins, would barely elicit a smile from him. And if the joke were not of the very best, the bored collector pitilessly guyed the story-teller.

"That's old as the hills, Pontes, I remember reading it in Laemmert's Almanack for 1850."

Pontes would smile with a vanquished look; but would inwardly say,—if that one wasn't appreciated another would be.

All his sagacity was focussed on the discovery of the Major's weak point. Each man has a preference for a certain class of humor or wit. One delights in wanton jests of rotund friars. Another regales himself with the boisterous good-humoured German Joke. Still another would give a year of his life for the Gaul's