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Updated: April 30, 2025
Senor Cagatinta!" cried the alcalde, suddenly raising his voice so as to be heard by all present, "Make out a proces verbal that the Senor Don Juan Dios Canelo, here present, will become prosecutor in this case. It cannot be doubted that a crime has been committed; and it is a duty we owe to ourselves as well as to this respectable man, to seek out and punish the authors of it."
Senor Don Juan de Dios!" cried the alcalde, in a peevish tone at the same time biting his gold-headed cane, the emblem of his office "Is it you or I who have here the right to ask questions? Carrai! it appears to me that you make me cut a strange figure!" Here Cagatinta interposed with a modest air "I shall answer our friend Canelo, if you permit me.
From the alcalde's answer, it was evident that this was not the first time that Cagatinta had made the remark. "Ah! Gregorio, amigo!" replied he, in a tone of good-humour, "you are growing tiresome with your repetitions.
As friend Cagatinta has just this minute observed to me, the ladder by which you scaled the balcony might prove sinister designs. But I know you are incapable of such. Rest contented, then, at being the accuser in place of the accused. Come, gentlemen! our duty calls us outside. Perhaps underneath the balcony we may find some traces of this most mysterious matter."
Nature, even in its crimes, does not leap to grand villainies at once; it proceeds from less to greater; and Cagatinta, though still but young, was yet capable of a little bit of "cribbing." Don Ramon was not long in coming out of his sleeping-room. In a little while he showed his jovial face at the door of the audience chamber.
One was a poor old steward, who, while heaving a sigh at the thought that his worldly store was about to be absorbed in the inexorable gulf of justice, at the same time searched for some trace of his lost mistress, praying for her and her child, and calling upon God to take them under his protection. The other pensive wanderer was Cagatinta, of whom the alcalde had again taken the advantage.
Such a pair would render him the most satisfied man in the world. This young man was the right hand of the alcalde his name Gregorio Cagatinta. On reaching the door, he gave a modest knock with his horn ink-bottle, which he carried hanging to his button. The door was opened by an old housekeeper.
Here Cagatinta who like water that had been a long time dammed up and had now found vent stretched out both his arms, and in a loud voice cried out: "I can swear to it!" "He can swear to it," said the alcalde. "He can swear to it," mechanically repeated one or two of the bystanders. "Yes, my friends!" solemnly added Cagatinta.
Cagatinta, and some others, complimented, with a laugh, this little bit of magisterial facetiousness. "But, senor alcalde," spoke out Don Juan, disgusted with this ill-timed pleasantry, "a proof that there has been a forced entry into the chamber is this broken glass of the window, of which you see some pieces still lying on the balcony."
Here the alcalde made a sign to Cagatinta, whose whole faculties were keenly bent to discover what service was expected from him, by which he was to gain the object of his ambition the liver-coloured breeches. The alcalde continued: "You all know, my children, of my attachment to the family of Mediana.
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