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But it would have been the height of discourtesy to give way to our inclination by showing a lack of appetite; moreover, it is not often that a party is held in a house built to be used merely one hour. So we did honor to the occasion, but had to let out our belts before mounting immediately afterward. Padre Juan Villaverde. His great trail. The beginning of the mountain journey. Nozo.
Senor Villaverde listened and bowed towards me, but with no softening in his stern, calm face, while his cold grey eyes seemed to look straight through me at something beyond.
Now the Spaniards in the Philippines at best were but poor road- or trail-makers. Indeed, in the matter of trails they were simply stupid, in some cases actually going straight up a hill and down the other side, when the way around was no longer, and of course far easier to maintain. But Padre Juan Villaverde of the Dominicans was a great and honorable exception.
He lodged me for the night, and hired mules for me to proceed to Panama in the morning; so I slung my hammock in an old Spanish soldier's house, who keeps a kind of posada, and was called by my friend Villaverde at daydawn, whose object was, not to tell me to get ready for my journey, but to ask me if I would go and bathe before starting.
I asked. "What, do you not know? He is a Judge of First Instance, and his daughters are my dearest friends. Is it not strange to meet them like this? Oh, I must see them to ask for papa and mamita!" and here she began to cry. The waiter came up with a card from the Senor Villaverde requesting an interview with the Senorita Peralta.
From this eminence there was a view of the yellowish countryside that reached as far as Jetafe and Villaverde, and the San Isidro cemeteries with their grey mudwalls and their black cypresses. From the Ronda de Segovia, which they covered in a short time, they climbed up Aguila Street, and paused before a house at the corner of the Campillo de Gil Imon.
When the excitement of this tempestuous meeting had spent itself, Senor Villaverde, who stood looking on with grave, impressive face, spoke to Demetria, telling her that his old friend, General Santa Coloma, had just informed him of her arrival in Buenos Ayres and of the hotel where she was staying.
Worcester that this visit should be happy in all respects; for, if not, the difficulties of intercourse with this people, already great, would be so seriously increased as to delay the civilizing intentions of the Government for many years to come. We rode off at about two o'clock, passing under numberless bamboo arches, on an astonishingly good road, built by Padre Juan Villaverde.
Through his father Gonzalo d'Albuquerque, the Lord of Villaverde, he was descended, but illegitimately, from King Diniz; and through his mother from the Menezez, the great explorers. Brought up at the court of Alphonzo V., he there received as liberal and thorough an education as was possible at the period.
It was the headquarters of a Spanish Comandancia in the old days, and here Padre Juan Villaverde lived and worked, seeking to convert the people, and to teach them to grow coffee and to plant European vegetables.
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