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Some weeks after my day in the Calle del Candilejo I was on duty at one of the town gates. A little way from the gate there was a breach in the wall. The masons were working at it in the daytime, and at night a sentinel was posted on it, to prevent smugglers from getting in. All through one day I saw Lillas Pastia going backward and forward near the guard-room, and talking to some of my comrades.
Carmen, who was still laughing, said to me: "'My boy, I can't ask you to dinner. But to-morrow, as soon as you hear the drums beat for parade, come here with your oranges. You'll find a better furnished room than the one in the Calle del Candilejo, and you'll see whether I am still your Carmencita. Then afterwards we'll talk about gipsy business.
Carmen kept watch for them. She was to warn them with her castanets the instant she caught sight of the patrol. But there was no necessity for that. The smugglers finished their job in a moment. "The next day I went to the Calle del Candilejo. Carmen kept me waiting, and when she came, she was in rather a bad temper. "'I don't like people who have to be pressed, she said.
"'Well, mi payllo, are you still angry with me? she said. 'I must care for you in spite of myself, for since you left me I don't know what has been the matter with me. Look you, it is I who ask you to come to the Calle del Candilejo, now! "So we made it up: but Carmen's temper was like the weather in our country. The storm is never so close, in our mountains, as when the sun is at its brightest.
But after that day in the Calle del Candilejo I couldn't think of anything else. All day long I used to walk about, hoping I might meet her. I sought news of her from the old hag, and from the fried-fish seller. They both told me she had gone away to Laloro, which is their name for Portugal. They probably said it by Carmen's orders, but I soon found out they were lying.
She had promised to meet me again at Dorotea's, but she didn't come. "And Dorotea began telling me again that she had gone off to Portugal about some gipsy business. "As experience had already taught me how much of that I was to believe, I went about looking for Carmen wherever I thought she might be, and twenty times in every day I walked through the Calle del Candilejo.
You didn't think about orders in the Calle del Candilejo! "'Ah! I cried, quite maddened by the very thought of that night. 'It was well worth while to forget my orders for that! But I won't have any smuggler's money! "'Well, if you won't have money, shall we go and dine together at old Dorotea's? "'No, said I, half choked by the effort it cost me. 'No, I can't. "'Very good!
I thought she would have carried away the whole shop. She took everything that was best and dearest, yemas,* turon, preserved fruits as long as the money lasted. And all these, too, I had to carry in paper bags. Perhaps you know the Calle del Candilejo, where there is a head of Don Pedro the Avenger. * That head ought to have given me pause. We stopped at an old house in that street.
He's like a cat that's been caught in the larder! "'And you, said I to her in my own language, 'you look like an impudent jade and I've a good mind to scar your face here and now, before your spark. "'My spark! said she. 'Why, you've guessed that all alone! Are you jealous of this idiot? You're even sillier than you were before our evening in the Calle del Candilejo!
However that may be, a street called Calle del Candilejo still exists in Seville, and in that street there is a bust which is said to be a portrait of Don Pedro. This bust, unfortunately, is a modern production. During the seventeenth century the old one had become very much defaced, and the municipality had it replaced by that now to be seen. Rom, husband. Romi, wife.
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