The latter then pulled his hat over his eyes, wrapped himself carefully in the folds of a wide zarapé of Indian fabric and striking colour, and proceeded hastily towards the centre of the city. After a walk of a few minutes the stranger stopped in front of a house, whose comfortable appearance and well-tended garden showed that it belonged to a person who, if not rich, was in easy circumstances. The door was ajar; the stranger pushed it, entered, and closed it after him; then, without any hesitation, like a man sure of what he was about, he crossed the garden, in which he met nobody, entered the passage of the house, turned to the right, and found himself in a room modestly, though comfortably furnished. On reaching this room the stranger fell into a butaca with the air of a tired man delighted to rest after a long journey, took off his zarapé, which he placed on the equipal, threw his hat upon it, and then, when he had made himself comfortable, he rolled a husk cigarette, struck a light with a gold mechero he took from his pocket, lit his papelito, and was soon surrounded by a dense cloud of bluish and fragant smoke, which rose above his head and formed a species of halo. The stranger threw his body back, half closed his eyes, and fell into that gentle ecstasy which the Italians call the _dolce far niente_, the Turks, _kief_, and for which we northerns, with our more powerful constitutions, have found no name, for the simple reason that we do not know it. The stranger had reached about the half of his second cigarette when another person entered the room. This man, who did not appear to take the slightest notice of the previous arrival, behaved, however, precisely as he had done: he also took off his zarapé, reclined on a butaca, and lit up a cigarette. Presently the garden sand creaked beneath the footsteps of a third visitor, followed immediately by a fourth, and then by a fifth; in short, at the end of an hour twenty persons were assembled in this room. They all smoked with apparent carelessness, and since their arrival had not exchanged a syllable. Six o'clock struck from a clock standing on a sideboard. The last stroke of the hour had scarce ceased vibrating ere the company, as if by common agreement, threw away their cigars, and rose with a vivacity that certainly was little to be expected after their previous carelessness. At the same moment a secret door opened in the wall, and a man appeared on the threshold.