Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/162

84 There are only two of us left now, but we are both good fellows. Come, will you have me for your friend, for life or death?'

"El Dancaïre stretched out his hand. He was a man of fifty.

"'Devil take these love stories!' he cried. 'If you'd asked him for Carmen he'd have sold her to you for a piastre! There are only two of us now—how shall we manage for to-morrow?'

"'I'll manage it all alone,' I answered. 'I can snap my fingers at the whole world now.'

"We buried Garcia, and we moved our camp two hundred paces farther on. The next morning Carmen and her Englishman came along with two muleteers and a servant. I said to El Dancaïre:

'I'll look after the Englishman, you frighten the others—they're not armed!'

"The Englishman was a plucky fellow. He'd have killed me if Carmen hadn't jogged his elbow.

"To put it shortly, I won Carmen back that day, and my first words were to tell her she was a widow.

"When she knew how it had all happened—

"'You'll always be a lillipendi,' she said. 'Garcia ought to have killed you. Your Navarrese guard is a pack of nonsense, and he has