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The old man whimpered with emotion, as usual, when he spoke to the consul, but in his kindly, patriarchal gestures there was something new that seemed to repel the Spaniard. Zabulon received him with a grunt and would continue counting money. For four days Aguirre had not seen Luna. The hours that he spent at his window, vainly watching the house of the Aboabs!
On his return to St Jago, the seat of government, Valdivia received a considerable body of recruits to his army from Peru, together with 350 horses; on which he dispatched Francisco de Aguirre with two hundred men, to reduce the provinces of Tucuman and Cajo on the eastern side of the Andes; not considering how inadequate was even his whole undiminished military force to retain so large an extent of country as that he had now occupied, and a so numerous and warlike people under subjection.
When the general terror and dismay had a little subsided, the magistrates proceeded to open the sealed instructions which had been left with them by Valdivia, when he departed on his late fatal expedition. In these he named Alderte, Aguirre, and Villagran successively to the vacant government in case of his own decease.
His poor friend was in the hospital, in the hope that a few days of rest away from the damp gloom of the shop would be sufficient to relieve him of the cough that seemed to unhinge his body and make him throw up blood. He came from the land of the sun and needed its divine caress. Aguirre might have stopped at the Aboabs' establishment, but he was somewhat afraid.
Aguirre had acquaintances in Gibraltar, idlers, whom he had met in the cafés, young, obsequious, courteous Israelites who received this Castilian official with ancestral deference, questioning him about affairs of Spain as if that were a remote country.
Aguirre from thence landed about Santa Marta and sacked it also, putting to death so many as refused to be his followers, purposing to invade Nuevo Reyno de Granada and to sack Pamplona, Merida, Lagrita, Tunja, and the rest of the cities of Nuevo Reyno, and from thence again to enter Peru; but in a fight in the said Nuevo Reyno he was overthrown, and, finding no way to escape, he first put to the sword his own children, foretelling them that they should not live to be defamed or upbraided by the Spaniards after his death, who would have termed them the children of a traitor or tyrant; and that, sithence he could not make them princes, he would yet deliver them from shame and reproach.
Besides, he had to leave. But Aguirre interrupted resolutely: "Don't reason. Just close your eyes. In love there should be no reflection. Good sense and the conventionalities are for persons who don't love each other. Say yes, and afterwards time and our good luck will arrange everything." Luna laughed, amused by Aguirre's grave countenance and the vehemence of his speech.
The old man grasped her hands across the counter, caressing them tremblingly. "This is my granddaughter, sir consul, my granddaughter Luna. Her father is dead, and my daughter too. She comes from Morocco. No one loves the poor girl as much as her grandfather does." And the patriarch burst into tears, moved by his own words. Aguirre left the shop with triumphant joy.
They enter the homes of the faithful and run everything, giving out orders that nobody dares to disobey." The following day Aguirre did not leave his street, and either walked up and down in front of the Aboabs' house or stood motionless at the entrance to his hotel, without losing sight for a moment of Luna's dwelling. Perhaps she would come out!
Toward night-fall Aguirre experienced a strange shudder of emotion, similar to that which he had felt in the brokers' shop upon beholding the Jew that had just returned from South America. A woman came out of the Aboabs' house; she was dressed in black. It was Luna, just as he had seen her the day before.
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