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30 in the hands of the soldiers; they are seeking you among all your friends. You do not know the alcalde you have to do with."

"Do you know him, then?"

"I know all the alcaldes, señor; and what proves how little I deserve the surname bestowed upon me is, that all the alcaldes do not know me; but of all his fellows, the one in pursuit of you is the most cunning, the most rapacious, and the most diabolical."

Although I felt that this portrait was exaggerated, I was for a moment shaken in my resolution. Perico then represented to me, in very moving terms, the happiness his wife and children would receive by seeing their benefactor indebted to them for a night's lodging. Having a choice between two protectors equally disinterested, I allowed myself to be convinced by the one whose rapacity seemed most easily satisfied; I decided upon once more following the lépero.

Meanwhile, night came on; we traversed suspicious lanes, deserted places, streets unknown to me, and shrouded in darkness. The serenos (policemen) became more and more scarce. I felt myself hurried away into the heart of those dreadful suburbs where justice dares not penetrate; I was unarmed, and at the mercy of a man whose frightful confession I had just heard. Hitherto the Zaragate, I must confess, in spite of his crimes so unblushingly avowed, did not seem to me to stand out in glaring relief among a people de moralized by ignorance, want, and civil wars; but at that hour, amid a labyrinth of dark lanes, and in the silence of the night, my imagination gave fantastic and colossal dimensions to his picaresque figure. My position was a difficult one. To leave such a guide