Part 42 (2/2)
”But haven't you heard that it was one Lucas? Were you sleeping?”
All began to laugh. The peasant, embarra.s.sed, muttered a few words, and went away with head down, walking slowly.
”Here! Where are you going?” cried the old man. ”You can't get out that way. That's the way to the dead man's house.”
”That fellow is still asleep,” said the officer with a jeer. ”We'll have to throw some water on him!”
Those standing around laughed again.
The peasant left the place where he had played so poor a part and directed his steps toward the church. In the sacristy, he asked for the sacristan mayor.
”He is still sleeping!” they replied gruffly. ”Don't you know that they sacked the convent last night?”
”I will wait till he awakes.”
The sacristans looked at him with that rudeness characteristic of people who are in the habit of being ill-treated.
In a dark corner, the one-eyed sacristan mayor was sleeping in a large chair. His spectacles were across his forehead among his long locks of hair. His squalid, bony breast was bare, and rose and fell with regularity.
The peasant sat down near by, disposed to wait patiently, but a coin fell on the floor and he began looking for it with the aid of a candle, under the sacristan mayor's big chair. The peasant also noted ”stick-tights” on the sleeping man's pantaloons and on the arms of his camisa. The sacristan awoke at last, rubbed his good eye, and, in a very bad humor, reproached the man.
”I would like to order a ma.s.s said, senor,” replied he in a tone of excuse.
”They have already finished all the ma.s.ses,” said the one-eyed man, softening his accent a little. ”If you want it for to-morrow.... Is it for souls in Purgatory?”
”No, senor;” replied the peasant, giving him a peso.
And looking fixedly in his one eye, he added:
”It is for a person who is going to die soon.” And he left the sacristy. ”I could have seized him last night,” he added, sighingly as he removed the plaster from his neck. And he straightened up and regained the stature and appearance of Elias.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII
VAE VICTIS!
Civil Guards were pa.s.sing with a sinister air to and fro in front of the door of the tribunal, threatening with the b.u.t.ts of their guns the daring boys who stood on tip-toe or raised each other up in order to look through the grates in the windows.
The sala did not present that same joyful aspect as it did when the program for the festival was being discussed. It was gloomy and the silence was almost death-like. The Civil Guards and the cuaderilleros who were occupying the room scarcely spoke and the few words that they did p.r.o.nounce were in a low tone. Around the table sat the directorcillo, two writers and some soldiers scribbling papers. The alferez walked from one side to the other, looking from time to time ferociously toward the door. Themistocles after the battle of Salamis could not have shown more pride at the Olympic games. Dona Consolacion yawned in one corner of the room, and disclosed her black palate and her crooked teeth. Her cold and evil look was fixed on the door of the jail, covered with indecent pictures. Her husband, made amiable by the victory, had yielded to her request to be allowed to witness the interrogation and, perhaps, the tortures which were to follow. The hyena smelled the dead body, she licked her chops and was wearied at the delay in the punishment.
The gobernadorcillo's chair, that large chair under the portrait of His Majesty, was empty and seemed destined for some other person.
At nearly nine o'clock, the curate, pale and with eyebrows knit, arrived.
”Well, you haven't made any one wait!” said the alferez sarcastically to the friar.
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