United States or Bouvet Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


We had decided to go on horseback to Paso Real, a little distance beyond San Geronimo, and there take boat for Tampico. When morning came, we expressed surprise over Don Leandro's charging rent, in addition to the rather large price which we had already paid for beds. This seemed to hurt his sensitive feelings, with the result that we started without his company.

"Oh, I'm prepared," said the lady, with a slight foreign accent, showing a revolver of small calibre. Roberto paid, despite Leandro's protests, and they left the cafe. Coming out on the Plaza del Rastro, they walked down the Ribera de Curtidores as far as the Ronda de Toledo. "If the lady wishes to see the house we live in, this is the one," said Leandro.

You've had a quarrel; that's all." "I'll wind up by doing something desperate. Take my word for it," muttered Leandro. Neither spoke. They entered La Corrala, climbed up the stairways and walked into Leandro's house. They brought out supper, but Leandro didn't eat; he drank three glasses of water in succession and went out to the gallery.

As the pair walked on, prostitutes in their gay attire accosted them from the doorways in which they lurked, but looking into Leandro's grim countenance and Manuel's poverty-stricken features the girls let them walk on, following them with a gibe at their seriousness. Midway up the narrow, gloomy street shone a red lamp, which illuminated the squalid front of the Marina cafe.

This confidence in her power turned the girl despotic, whimsical, voluble; she would amuse herself by rousing Leandro's jealousy; she had arrived at a particular state, a blend of affection and hatred, in which the affection remained within and the hatred outside, revealing itself in a ferocious cruelty, in the satisfaction of mortifying her lover constantly.

Valencia, divining Leandro's resolve, grew so pale that his face turned a sickly blue, his eyes distended and his teeth began to chatter. At Leandro's first lunge he retreated, but remained on guard; then his fear overcame him and abandoning all thought of attack he took to flight, knocking over the chairs. Leandro, blind, smiling cruelly, gave implacable pursuit.

It was a sad, painful sight; all the partizans of the bully began to eye him with scorn. "Now, you yellow-liver, you show the white feather!" shouted Pastiri. "You're flitting about like a grasshopper. Off with you, my boy! You're in for it! If you don't get out right away you'll be feeling a palm's length of steel in your ribs!" One of Leandro's thrusts ripped the bully's jacket.

That would account for all, is it not so? They say the churches had much money once. Quien sabe? Adios senor." As I turned Pancho into the trail that would bring me to the Ventura road, my mind was busy at a clue that Leandro's parting words had started. "F Y," the letters carved on the chest somehow they seemed to link up with something in my memory.

Leandro's blustering outburst appealed to one of the maidens, who turned to look at the youth and smiled at him; but Milagros was not in the least affected, and looking back, she repeatedly sought the group of three men with her glance. At this juncture there appeared the fellow whom Leandro had designated with the sobriquet of Lechuguino, in company of the proof-reader and his wife.

"But, I say, Ludovico," rejoined Manutoli, "in the meantime, till our Leandro's poem shall have been read and duly appreciated, you are the only one who has been admitted to the privacy of La Lalli. What is your report to us Gentiles of the outer court? Is she really so unapproachable? And is she as adorable behind the scenes as before them?"