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Updated: June 2, 2025
The posada was merely a long barn, with an open roof of wood, on one side of which were half a dozen mangers and in a corner two mules. Against another wall were rough benches for travellers to sleep on. I dismounted and walked to the huge fireplace at one end, where I saw three very old women seated like witches round a brasero, the great brass dish of burning cinders.
"The black-haired man who is now looking over my shoulder is the celebrated thief Palacio, the most expert housebreaker and dexterous swindler in Spain in a word, the modern Guzman Dalfarache. The brawny man who sits by the brasero of charcoal, is Salvador, the highwayman of Ronda, who has committed a hundred murders.
"Well, things went on in this way for years, and I had three chai by the black man, two of them died, but the youngest, who is the Calli who sits by the brasero, was spared; so we roamed about and choried and told baji; and it came to pass that once in the winter time our company attempted to pass a wide and deep river, of which there are many in the Chim del Corahai, and the boat overset with the rapidity of the current and all our people were drowned, all but myself and my chabi, whom I bore in my bosom.
"Now sit down, all of you," commanded Doña Teresa, as she knelt beside the brasero and poured the syrup into the cooking-pan, "It will take some time to cook enough for every one, and if you are in too much of a hurry you may burn your fingers and your tongue. José, you tell us a story while we are waiting."
I looked about for a chair, but could see none; at a short distance, however, I perceived the end of a broken pillar lying on the floor; this I rolled to the brasero and sat down upon it.
I explained with heat that I had money; it is true I was bedraggled and disreputable, but when I showed some coins, to prove that I could pay for what I bought, she asked unwillingly what I required. I ordered a brasero, and dried my clothes as best I could by the burning cinders.
When they were inside their little home once more, Doña Teresa made a fire in the brasero and heated some of the turkey for Pancho, and while he ate, Tonio and Tita stood on each side of their one chair, in which he sat, and listened with their eyes and mouths both while their father told about his adventures as a Soldier of the Revolution.
His dress, or rather his undress, was somewhat shabby: he had a foraging cap on his head, and in lieu of a morning gown, he wore a sentinel's old great coat. "I am glad to make your acquaintance, senor nacional," said I to him, after his mother had departed, and Baltasar had taken his seat, and of course lighted a paper cigar at the brasero.
You won't get lost, because Tonto knows the way home if you don't. Get all the ocote branches you can to burn in the brasero." The Twins were delighted with this errand. It meant a picnic for them, so they ran back to the house and got Tonto and the luncheon and started away down the road as gay as two larks in the springtime.
I could recognise no Redouza here: but the stair was fairly clear, and I soon came to one of those boudoirs which sweetly recall the deep-buried inner seclusion and dim sanctity of the Eastern home: a door encrusted with mother-of-pearl, sculptured ceiling, candles clustered in tulips and roses of opal, a brazen brasero, and, all in disarray, the silken chemise, the long winter-cafetan doubled with furs, costly cabinets, sachets of aromas, babooshes, stuffs of silk.
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