It was, indeed, okay with Ripoll, and that's how things stood. His living expenses and the sale of his invention, once linked, remained equally insoluble. He became accustomed to living on credit, just as he got used to finding the doors at the Ministry of Defense permanently closed to him. The key was patience, and more patience, as doña Nicasia patiently demonstrated by never reminding him of his constantly mounting debt to her. Everyone at the Guipuzcoana Boarding House became interested in the submarine, the workings of which (precisely because they remained utterly incomprehensible) represented something not only otherworldly, but also, a source of future honor and advantage for each and every one of them. The curate rarely had an opportunity to say mass as he waited in vain for an appointment to a rural parish near the capital, promised to him by a well-placed member of the Spanish community in Mexico, but when he did say mass, he always included the invention among his petitions for divine favor. And on one Sunday, the boarders emptied their pockets to buy cider and walnuts and held a naming ceremony for the submarine, which, at the suggestion of Sordo and in tribute to doña Nicasia's regional origins, was baptized as the Aragonés. Nicasia danced a jota, the curate blessed the contraption, and Isidoro Gallegos sang, by himself, both parts of the duet from a fashionable zarzuela of recent years:

“Oh, the progress of the sciences is awesome to behold …”

The other boarders began to regard both inventor and invention with reverence, always speaking softly when at home and taking his every pronouncement as scripture. Arriving at the building late at night, they would look up at the engineer's lit window and smile to themselves, proud to live so close to a true genius who was bringing life to a fabulous creation, a submarine, that belonged somehow to the entire boarding house and that they therefore embraced with fierce adoration, even in its current state—tiny, imperfect, unfinished. They would adore it more fiercely yet on that great day, soon, when it splashed into the Gulf of Mexico and swam off like a whale to blow the most formidable armored battleships right out of the water! Olé!

Alas, the reign of Ripoll, inaugurated with such tender yearnings, did not last as long as he needed it to last. The arrival of the noted matador, el Jarameño, was the end of one era and the beginning of another. When el Jarameño entered the boarding house one fine day with a letter of recommendation from Spain, fistfuls of money, a pile of suitcases and trunks, and a personal valet, Bruno, rich in Andalusian lore of all kinds, Ripoll was instantly eclipsed in the eyes of the other boarders, and the Aragonés was just as instantly forgotten. In a kind of atavistic, ethnic instinct, everyone turned avidly to the torero and, driven by a secret, irresistible force, they welcomed and pampered him, as if his presence brought with it a miraculous blessing that they had awaited for years and years. El Jarameño won spontaneous, enthusiastic, unanimous approval with little effort on his part, but one thing he did have to do was produce plenty of cash, and quickly. With no offense intended toward doña Nicasia, it must be said that the Guipuzcoana was sailing straight into bankruptcy. El Jarameño, who was good at sniffing out such matters, applied a radical remedy, offering to pay double to be well taken care of and forking over the first two weeks' worth on the spot: