The Spanish dancer : being a translation from the original French by Henry L. Williams of Don Caesar de Bazan (8 page)

"Alackaday! We shall be burying him instead of the Carnival!" said he, with pretended grief.

CHAPTER V. DON Cesar's challenge.

There came to the water fount two persons, deep in their own troubles.

One of them was a youth, stalwart and dingy of complexion like a gunsmith's apprentice. He was struggling" hard, as his quivering under lip showed, to keep back his tears.

His companion was one of those burly Galician peasants who come to town believing" that the streets are paved with gold, but who trudge daily to and fro conveying water to the thirsty, but not without remuneration. On the contrary, the water carriers of Spanish cities— and such was Senor Pacolo—charge as much as they dare for the porterage, and more, when the heat augments and the tide runs low.

As his unfortunate companion needed not money, the worthy fellow was profuse with offers of sympathy and encouragement. '

"Nay, nay, little Master Lazarillo," said he, "do not spurn graces—my free offices! I have learned to bear my burdens with quiet, but I uphold you in your rebellion against tyranny. For it is tyranny, since you are the armorer's 'prentice and not a soldier bound, to have that captain of the Royal Arquebusiers pitch on one so lowly!"

"Friend Pacolo," returned the youth, shaking his hand, "let this be our farewell. Sell my goods at your lodgings for what will bury me. Your poor comrade who came out of the same mountains as you will never lay his head under their pines! Bury me anywhere, but in the coun-

try if you can. I am not ungrateful to you for your kindness, and you are sound as a priest in warning me from self-murder—the most cowardly of murders! But I have but one desire now—it is to die!"

He made a motion as if to mount the basin edge and throw himself into the water.

"Refrain!" cried Don Caesar, suddenly, on seeing the shadow projected across the surface from the lamp at the drinking-shop. "How do you know but that I, deprived of wine, may stoop to drink of that water?"

"If you please, sir," intervened the water carrier, "this lad wishes to make a hole in the water, which might be filled by older and less promising men !"

"Why, it is a likely youth, and ought not to lag with hanging bridle!" commented Jose. "If you have lost your master's money box do not throw your life over as the stake by which to win it back! Rather go into the gypsy-ward yonder, where you will not have water thrown at you any more than the petty pilfering! By our Lady! you might better go for a sailor if you have a leaning toward the molten crystal over which Cortez and Pizarro marched to empire!"

"If you please, sir, he is bent on dying!" repeated Pacolo.

"Then let him straighten himself on living I Drowning is not one of those courses to be taken in a hurry! Bah! die before you are pricked by your heard coming, and long before you can have felt those prickings of remorse! Wait till you arrive at my age, and stand between taking to water—as a drink!—and being burned with pent-up courage—like those frontier towns, which, in Holland, if taken by us, are burnt, and if the Dutch find they cannot be maintained, are submerged in this vile fluid, water!"

"He is an armorer's apprentice, my master," continued the carrier, hoping that time would cool the youth's ar-

dor; "and he ought to shoot himself—if there is anything in the saying, 'Hve by a trade, die in the same!' "

"No truth, friend—or the ropemakers would go up the hangman's ladder!"

"Your honor is right! Drown ? Marry! are we frogs to think such a passage out of misery ?"

"You, too, are wise. No, boy, do not drown, in preference to this stable, lovely and flowery earth, in that unstable and muddy element!" moralized Don Caesar. "The thought has given me what we scholars call the ague, and my late companions, the wanderers, 'the shivery-shakes'— coarse, but convincing. You wish for death—you, a minor, who cannot be plagued with duns and creditors 1"

"He is plagued with a cursed mean master," interrupted Pacolo, "who would not draw you out a pistole unless you drew out a pistol on him! This knave—but you tell the gentleman your story, for he might give you g'ood advice "

"It is all he can give at present. But out with it, my lad!" He sat on the basin edge and swung his legs. "If you have to do with instruments of war, I can be the judge, for, lock ye, a gentleman-at-arms is necessarily a gentleman of arms. To it!" ""

"My name, sir, is Lazarillo. I am learning my trade of gunsmith, and my master, instead of instructing me in the craft, set me to keeping in order the firearms at the royal arsenal, which adjoins the prison, while the new arsenal is building."

"Very good—so far, no harm. To furbish up arms is part of a good soldier's duties."

"Well, sir, some one left a window open, and the dew, blowing in, the barrels were spotted with rust. The captain fell foul of my master in consequence, and he, to avoid the tongue-lashing, laid all the blame upon my

jSo Don Caesar's Challenge.

shoulders and consented that the old martinet should hav«S a dozen lashes laid on me!"

"He did! I should knock spots out of the old leopard!" ejaculated Caesar, not in the least judicially. "I have not the pleasure of the acquaintance of your estimable employer, but I could give him a leathering!"

"So I ran out not to receive the lashes!"

"A dozen lashes, eh?" and the don's shoulders heaved at the idea.

Since his wanderings with the gypsies he had seen isv*hat flogging implied in tho'se days for physical arguments.

"Oh, it is not the number, sir," continued the boy, almost weeping because of having met sympathy in this high quarter. "But I am a Spaniard, a mountaineer, and though we can stand suffering, we will not put up with a whiplash!"

"Bravo! my Httle Achilles!" cried Don Csesar, forget-iingall about the amateur judgeship, "this is a true sionof Spain!" He rose, and, going over to where Don Jos6 had stood, apart, musing, he took his bent arm familiarly and resumed: "Cousin, we two must intercede with this militai-y savage!"

"Alas, my ov/n lieutenant and my master's wife joined to plead for me, but the captain said that he would ply the scourge with his own hand rather than have the little blockhead escape! meaning by blockhead, yours to serve, sir!" and Lazarillo clasped his hands to Bazan as assuredly he would not do to the miserable autocrat,

"Don't be uneasy. We will be your advocate's, noble advocates! Jose, you must teill him under his own nose to desist—this is no way to drum up recruits by chastising the boys! You, who lord it over the police and the watch, I warrant that, though nobody, you can cut the comb of this chanticleer 1"

"You will pardon me," said the marquis, withdrawing his arm with softness, like that oiling his voice, "but I cannot put captains of the Royal Arquebusiers in my pocket! Do not interfere—^what are a few stripes morQ or less to the budding soldier!"

"It depends upon where they are placed," replied Don Caesar, dryly, "for, on the arm, they make a corporal—^on the back, an assassin!—captains have been shot in the back of the head for unjustly 'striping' a trooper!"

"Let him shoot him when the time comes. I mind my own business, and do' not soil my fingers!" and Jose walked a little way off from the fountain.

"Ah! after your protestations of good-will, you fall away like this water!'' Caesar said this as he indignantly withdrew his hand from the basin in which he had plunged it, as though to wash off the contagion impregnated by the faithless friend's rich sleeve.

"You may be banished to the Azores Islands for revolt against the king's uniform," observed the criminal police chief, as a last word.

"I would prefer the Nutmeg Islands, so that I might spice my wine! but, banish me, if you will! let it be after I have remonstrated with this disgrace to this uniform if he persists in his inhumanity!"

As Jose retired to watch at a safe standing, there was a clink of arms and a smell of the fuses being lit, with which the hand guns were firedi

At this token of approaching combat, Don Caesar's mien absolutely altered. Any traces of the enervating influences of the wine cup were blown away. He straightened himself, and, assuming a gallant attitude, with one hand on his tilted sword and the other on his hip, he waited for the comers.

"Get thee behind me, thou little Beelzebub/' said he ten

the refugee, "you little guess w'hat a pickle you may; have soused me in, before we are through with you!"

"It is they!" said the boy. "They have pursued me, but I Avill not be lashed like a dog!"

"Peace; and trust us. We are going to defend you !'*

"We?" asked Lazari'llo and 'hiis humble friend in a breath.

"Assuredly WE! Don Caesar de Bazan and his Split-steel, his good blade!"

The plaza was deserted. The chains had been stretched across the street-heads, opening into the square, and the houses had become "blind" by shutters going up before the windows and the doors having even the wickets sealed. A few lights twinkled, generally in the garret windows. Shadows stole away across the space as a file of "hawkbushmen" tramped over toward the fountain. They were not the civic watch, not the armed police, but the royal men-at-arms. They wore bufif breeches, thigh-plates and shin-plates, as well as cuirasses, which gleamed in the scattered beams. Across the steel plate barred the black leather bandolier, containing the cartridges for the guns, and each carried at the side a long coil of whitened rope, being the match for igniting the powder in the pans.

Their helmets were of almond shape, and bore a green plume along the crest. This plume denoted that they were on service.

They were headed l^y a grizzled veteran, who'se short-cropped hair showed just under the steel cap, gilded to distinguish him from the subalterns. This was Captain Octavio Herreno, Viscount Aguastintas, who had fretted for twelve years at lack of promotion into the palace corps, where the regulations were light and the dtities formalities.

Don Jose halloaed to his friend, and made a sign for him not to use his sword.

"Oh, hang- the edict! Still, it is Carnival week—let us respect Mother Church, althoug'h I only know one prayer: 'Let me never be tired of the only life I have ever known.'"

So he reluctantly released his grip of his sword pommel and let his hands fall by his sides, where they flapped, however, with impatience, like a cock's wings iwhen about to crow a challenge.

Pacolo shrewdly harbored himself with the fountain between, and, peering forth betw^een two lions' heads, he stared, muttering:

"I much blunder if this Boabdil of a musketeer will not' rue his plucking out little Lazarillo from that gentleman's ward, for, never forgive me! but he will receive such a drubbing as the Algerines gave the Emperor Karl!"

"Do not run again!" whispered Bazan to the trembling lad; "you wear my colors now! They may crush me as between Upper and Lower Andalusia, but till then do not budge!"

In spite of the g^loom, the two or three figures over at the water pool were visible to the searchers. They marched straightway thither.

The captain, perked up with his post, did not dream of any opposition. He halted his men at the basin, and, pointing out the shrinking boy with his gloved hand, said, utterly ignoring the others by:

"Ho! so you dared not go among the gypsies for refuge, in spite of your knowing what I promised, and that I am a man of my word! It is yo'ur prisoner. Secure him!"

The roisterer, dofifing his hat and flouris'hing its broken feather in a long-drawn bow, deferentially saluted with

an air Which advertised him as a finished cavaiiei, and said, in a voice to soften a stone effigy:

"You will excuse, Captain Don Octavio; I crave a moment. Allow me, that is, suffer your servant to intercede with prelude, oration and peroration, according to the humanities, for this trifling young delinquent."

Disregarding the eloquent suitor, the captain cried, angrily, to his arquebusiers:

"Are you deaf? I said, arrest!"

The troopers advanced, but their step was slow; they recognized in the solitary obstacle not the ex-courtier, but the madcap who had sunk to familiarity with thei fag-ends of the town. His exploits had all reached the! guardroom, not excepting this latest; indeed, his prowess in defeating the gang of gamesters had been recounted Hke a page out of Plutarch.

Lazarillo, more daunted by the fear tliat he had uselessly embroiled his gallant champion fell on his knees, iwhich he might not have done on his own account.

"Mercy!" he cried in a sonorous voice, "micrcy! Be 3 brave captain, and forgive!"

"My captain!" said Bazan, with the same suppressed tone, "are you in your turn grown dumb—for that sprmgald is speaking to you—you, Don Octavio! The poor creature is suing for mercy, which a true soldier always listens to, if he cannot grant! Mark, I add my appeal to his supplication for pardon."

"Who the deuce are you, scarecrow, Who has not even mended your tatters before entering a royal capital! But, sirrah, you go back to your duty! Resume th6 leather-cloth and shine up the armor! And no tears, they will only spot the steel, and they cannot soften my

heart! As for this miserable mummer " for Don