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You are a rogue, and everybody has found you out to be a rogue; and the worst of rogues I find you, who scruples not to cheat his own father." Saying these words, with great vehemence he seized hold of Piedro, and in the very midst of the little fruit-market gave him a severe beating. This beating did the boy no good; it was vengeance not punishment.
The fruit-market was beautiful; fruit-baskets half as high as I am, placed in rows of a dozen, filled with peaches, and painted of a bright vermilion color, which throws a ruddy becoming tint over the downy fruit. It looked like something in the "Arabian Nights;" heaps, literally heaps of melons, apples, pears, and wild grapes, in the greatest profusion.
The men were Indians, but they understood a little Spanish and I bargained with them to take us down to Tampico where we should arrive about seven the same evening, in time for the fruit-market and general fair held in the Plaza. They were glad enough to take us as they were going down in any case with a load of bananas and our fares would pay them well for the extra space we took up in the boat.
"With all my heart," said Piedro, still maintaining an unmoved countenance, and they returned immediately to the little wood-market. On their way, they had passed through the fruit-market, and crowds of those who were well acquainted with Piedro's former transactions followed, to hear the event of the present trial.
Carita is a deep-breasted market-girl nursing two brown babies, whom I have just seen sprawling over a gourd in the Campo Marzio; Fortezza, Speranza, Fede, I know them all, bless their sober, good eyes! in the fruit-market, or selling newspapers, or plaiting straws in the Piazza.
It was only a Circumcision procession on its way to the mosque; but the dust-enveloped rider in his rich dress, clutching the bewildered child to his breast, looked like some Oriental prince trying to escape with his son from the fiery embraces of desert Erl-maidens. As swiftly as it rose the storm subsided, leaving the fruit-market in ruins under a sky as clear and innocent as an infant's eye.
In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed with haws and blackberries; acorns cracked underfoot, and the burst husks of chestnuts lay exposing their auburn contents as if arranged by anxious sellers in a fruit-market. In all this proud show some kernels were unsound as her own situation, and she wondered if there were one world in the universe where the fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow.
If the water once overlapped the embankment at the fruit-market, it must very soon pour in in vast volume; for the streets there are considerably lower than the level of the Corso as it was, several large blocks of ice had floated or slid over on the quay. At this spot a serious catastrophe was apprehended. This time there were six shots fired; this was the signal of "Pest in danger."
This being a reference to the calling of the other speaker, who was a middleman in the vegetable and fruit-market. The first speaker, however, was not nearly exhausted yet he had to thump his fists on the unfortunate spindley table, and work off several other oratorical poses and a deal of elocutionary voice-play, ere he was finished.
The baker had scarcely finished speaking when Francisco, who was standing watching at the door, exclaimed, "Here comes Piedro! I hope he is not the boy who sold you the wood, Mr. Baker?" "He is the boy, though," replied the baker, and Piedro, who now entered the shop, started at the sight of Carlo and Francisco, whom he had never seen since the day of disgrace in the fruit-market.
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