It was soon discovered that Father Antonio Isabel was preparing him for his first communion. He was teaching him the catechism as he shaved the necks of his roosters. He explained to him with simple examples, as he put the brooding hens into their nests, how it had occurred to God on the second day of creation that chickens would be formed inside of an egg. From that time on the parish priest began to show the signs of senility that would lead him to say years later that the devil had probably won his rebellion against God, and that he was the one who sat on the heavenly throne, without revealing his true identity in order to trap the unwary. Warmed up by the persistence of his mentor, in a few months José Arcadio Segun-do came to be as adept in theological tricks used to confuse the devil as he was skilled in the tricks of the cockpit. Amaranta made him a linen suit with a collar and tie, bought him a pair of white shoes, and engraved his name in gilt letters on the ribbon of the candle. Two nights before the first communion, Father Antonio Isabel closeted himself with him in the sacristy to hear his confession with the help of a dictionary of sins. It was such a long list that the aged priest, used to going to bed at six o'clock, fell asleep in his chair before it was over. The interrogation was a revelation for José Arcadio Segun-do. It did not surprise him that the priest asked him if he had done bad things with women, and he honestly answered no, but he was upset with the question as to whether he had done them with animals. The first Friday in May he received communion, tortured by curiosity. Later on he asked Petronio, the sickly sexton who lived in the belfry and who, according to what they said, fed himself on bats, about it, and Petronio, answered him: "There are some corrupt Christians who do their business with female donkeys." José Arcadio Segun-do still showed so much curiosity and asked so many questions that Petronio lost his patience.
"I go Tuesday nights," he confessed. "if you promise not to tell anyone I'll take you next Tuesday."
Indeed, on the following Tuesday Petronio came down out of the tower with a wooden stool which until then no one had known the use of, and he took José Arcadio Segun-do to a nearby pasture. The boy became so taken with those nocturnal raids that it was a long time before he was seen at Catarino's. He became a cockfight man. "Take those creatures somewhere else," úrsula ordered him the first time she saw him come in with his fine fighting birds. "Roosters have already brought too much bitterness to this house for you to bring us any more." José Arcadio Segun-do took them away without any argument, but he continued breeding them at the house of Pilar Ternera, his grandmother, who gave him everything he needed in exchange for having him in her house. He soon displayed in the cockpit the wisdom that Father Antonio Isabel had given him, and he made enough money not only to enrich his brood but also to look for a man's satisfactions. úrsula compared him with his brother at that time and could not understand howthe twins, who looked like the same person in childhood, had ended up so differently.
Her perplexity did not last very long, for quite soon Aureli-ano Segun-do began to show signs of laziness and dissipation. While he was shut up in Melquíades' room he was drawn into himself the way Colonel Aureli-ano Buendía had been in his youth. But a short time after the Treaty of Neerlandia, a piece of chance took him out of his withdrawn self and made him face the reality of the world. A young woman who was selling numbers for the raffle of an accordion greeted him with a great deal of familiarity. Aureli-ano Segun-do was not surprised, for he was frequently confused with his brother. But he did not clear up the mistake, not even when the girl tried to soften his heart with sobs, and she ended taking him to her room. She liked him so much from that first meeting that she fixed things so that he would win the accordion in the raffle. At the end of two weeks Aureli-ano Segun-do realized that the woman had been going to bed alternately with him and his brother, thinking that they were the same man, and instead of making things clear, he arranged to prolong the situation. He did not return to Melquíades' room. He would spend his afternoons in the courtyard, learning to play the accordion by ear over the protests of úrsula, who at that time had forbidden music in the house because of the mourning and who, in addition, despised the accordion as an instrument worthy only of the vagabond heirs of Francisco the Man. Nevertheless, Aureli-ano Segun-do became a virtuoso on the accordion and he still was after he had married and had children and was one of the most respected men in Macon-do.