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Lieutenant Clarin telegraphed Bazaine at the city of Mexico the fact of our arrival, and he sent me a most courteous and pressing invitation to come up to the city; but, as we were accredited to the government of Juarez, it was considered undiplomatic to establish friendly relations with the existing authorities.
"It will do as well as any other," I replied mechanically still under the influence of surprise, not unmingled with a sentiment of admiration. "Dismount, then! Take your pouch an' flask along wi' ye ye see I've got myen? One shot at ye's all I'll want, I reck'n. But ef thur shed be a miss, look out for quick loadin'! an' mind, mister! thur's one o' us'll niver leave this clarin' alive."
"You'll niver be shot at arter now, 'ceptin' ye leave this clarin'. One crack from my gun'll be enuf for ye, I reck'n." "I'll take my chance. If it should go against me, you won't gain by it. Remember, my good man, it's not a duel we're fighting! You have chosen to attack me; and if I should fall in the affair, I've faith enough in the law to believe it will avenge me."
During the season he was always supplied with huckleberries, of which he was exceedingly fond. Any other bird would take his stand beside the dish, and eat till he was satisfied; but quite otherwise did the clarin.
This valiant lady, in the campaign for realism which she made under the title of "La Cuestion Palpitante" one of the best and strongest books on the subject counts him first among Spanish realists, as Clarin counts him first among Spanish novelists.
I should myself have made my little exception in favor of Don Armando Palacio Valdes, but Clarin speaks with infinitely more authority, and I am certainly ready to submit when he goes on to say that Galdos is not a social or literary insurgent; that he has no political or religious prejudices; that he shuns extremes, and is charmed with prudence; that his novels do not attack the Catholic dogmas though they deal so severely with Catholic bigotry but the customs and ideas cherished by secular fanaticism to the injury of the Church.
These themes the clarin constantly varied, and in the three years of his life with me I often noted down, in a sort of phonetic way, his songs, as he delivered them, and I have six or seven that are perfectly distinct and different. He never mixed them together or united them; he rarely sang two on the same day.
He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when they were shaken; the long clarin of the Mexicans, into which the performer does not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh ture of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who sit all day long in high trees, and can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three leagues; the teponaztli, that has two vibrating tongues of wood, and is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an elastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants; the yotl-bells of the Aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, like the one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexican temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a description.
Found a general assembly of heads, arms, legs, and every species of nude and other humanity pertaining to a studio; also an agreeable jumble of old pictures and new, picture frames, canvas, brushes, boxes, unfinished sketches, easels, palettes, a sofa, some cushions, a chair or two, bottles, papers, a stove rusty and fireless, and all things most charmingly innocent of any profane "clarin' up times" whatsoever.
To do Dinah justice, she had, at irregular periods, paroxyms of reformation and arrangement, which she called "clarin' up times," when she would begin with great zeal, and turn every drawer and closet wrong side outward, on to the floor or tables, and make the ordinary confusion seven-fold more confounded.
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