Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/411

 friend hinted, to the portmanteaus, wearing apparel, and other spoils of travellers who had been waited upon in the stage coach by a select body of the Mala gente. Pedro came, saw, and purchased. He was a man of few words. "Twenty dollars"—pesos fuertes—he said, and he drew a gold ounce from his sash and spun it into the air. "Arriba!" cried Pedro Hilo, "Heads." Heads it was, and the administrador stuck to his text of twenty dollars. A doubloon—scarcely four pounds—is not much for a berline, albeit the thing was wofully the worse for wear; but what was to be done with it? The bargain was concluded, and the Canonigo pocketed the gold ounce.

As we were leaving Sant' Augustin del Palmar, our omnibus escort making a brilliant show with their scarlet pantaloons and bright guns and bayonets, we passed the determined Catalan, who was girding himself up to ascend the roof of the downward-bound diligence. "I wish we had a few soldiers with us," he remarked, as he took in another reef of his parti-coloured sash. "A prod from a bayonet now and then might remind the postilion that it is his duty to drive his mules, and not to go to sleep under his monstrous millstone of a hat. Who ever saw such a sombrero save upon a picador in the bull-ring? In Barcelona such hats would be put down by the police. I have paid for my place in the interior," he continued, "but the malpractices of the postilion and the mayoral—who, I am assured, is in league with all the gangs of brigands between here and Cordova—can no longer be tolerated. I intend to mount the roof; and the first time that pig-headed driver goes to sleep again, I propose to myself to blow out his brains." So he went away, significantly slapping a pouch of untanned leather at his hip, and which I surmise contained his Colt's revolver. A determined fellow, this Juan Estrellada from Catalonia, and the very man to be useful in a street pronunciamiento. I fancy that he was somewhat nettled that no practical upshot should have followed his proposal to rob the fonda and throw the landlord out of window, and that he was anxious, before he reached Vera Cruz, to do something, the memory of which posterity would not willingly let die.

The Canonigo was excellent company, but his excessive temperance somewhat alarmed me. His "desayuno"—literally breakfast—would be taken at about four o'clock in the morning; for we always recommenced our journey at daybreak. Then he would take a cup of chocolate—a brown aromatic gruel mixed thick and slab—with one tiny loaf of Indian corn bread. And nor bite nor sup would he take again until sunset. The worst of it was that we were not always sure of finding supper when we reached the town or village where we had elected to stay the night. The Canonigo, however, seemed totally indifferent to our lighting upon an Egypt without any corn in it. His supper was always ready, and it seemed to serve him in lieu of dinner, and lunch, and all beside. He produced his grass-woven cigar-case and begun to smoke. Not papelitos, mind. Everybody in Mexico—man, woman, or child, Spaniard, half-caste, or Indian—inhales the fumes of tobacco wrapped in paper all day long. But the Canonigo was a smoker of puros, the biggest of Cabañas. They didn't make him sallow, they didn't make him nervous; and he never complained of headache—at least through smoking. On one occasion the worthy gentleman made the confession, "Tengo mala cabeza"—My head is bad. It was on the night before we arrived at Amosoque. We chanced to put up at a venta kept by a Frenchman, whose wife was a capital cook, and whose cellar was, moreover, stocked with capital wine. He gave us an excellent supper, and we subsequently "cracked"—I believe that is the correctly convivial expression—sundry bottles of that very sound Burgundy wine called Moulin-à-vent. Well, we were four to drink it, and the temperate canon would scarcely count as one. He had a thimbleful, however—two thimblefuls, perhaps—nay, a bumper and a half—and the cockles of his good old heart were warmed. In his merriment he sang a wonderful song, setting forth how a donkey, wandering in a field, once fell upon a flute in which a shepherd had "left" a tune. The donkey trolled, and the tune "came out;" whereupon "Aha!" brays the conceited animal, "who shall say that donkeys cannot play the flute?"

Then the Canonigo, merging into another mood, like Alexander at his feast, began to tell us about the saints—of the wonders worked by St. Lampsacus and St. Hyacinth, St. Petronilla and St. Jago of Compostella. And then he fell asleep, and I can't help thinking that he woke up the next morning slightly flustered about the "cabeza," and that the Moulin-à-vent might have had something to do with the severity with which he spoke about the in-