Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/48

46 days had passed. No attention seemed to have been paid to the unfortunate accident of which I had been the innocent cause, and nothing remained of my nocturnal adventures but an invincible horror of the whole tribe of léperos, when I received an order to appear before a strange alcalde. A man about forty years of age, as much a stranger to me as the alcalde, was waiting for me at the bar.

"Señor," said this man to me, "I am the lamp lighter whom your lordship almost killed; and as this accident has kept me from work for a fortnight, you will not take it ill if I ask you to make it up to me."

"Certainly not," said I, delighted to know that I had not to reproach myself with the death of any body. "How much do you ask?"

"Five hundred piastres, Señor."

I must confess that this exorbitant charge immediately changed my pleasure into anger, and I could not help mentally consigning the lamplighter to the devil. But these feelings cooled down almost immediately; and the alcalde advising me to compound with the man, I was glad to be let off for a fifth part of the sum demanded by the lamplighter. After all, if my studies had been too expensive, the experience I had gained had its value, and I regretted nothing that Perico had extorted from me, not even the noble horse which he had so ingeniously appropriated.