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"No, not Juan; but Senor Monteverde. Yes, I am sure it must be he, though he is poorly dressed, and walks with a tottering gait. Yes; they are leading him up to the place of execution." Forgetting Don Jose's caution, I sprang forward to the window and caught a glance it was but a momentary one of our poor friend. It was sufficient, however, to convince me that I was not mistaken.
"One reason why I like to travel with foreign Senors," said he to me, "is, that when I lose anything, they never make me pay for it." "For all that," I answered, "take care you don't lose my umbrella: it cost three dollars." Since then, nothing can exceed Jose's attention to that article. He is at his wit's end how to secure it best.
Juan was following in the footsteps of Manuel and the rest. It was Isabella who first saw the matador, and uttered an exclamation. "Your brother is coming," she cried, "with yes, with Sebastiano." José's simple face was on fire with delight, but Sebastiano looked less gay, and his step was less carelessly buoyant than it had been in the bull-ring.
The upshot of their conversation was that their host offered to take them immediately into the town, where they could find accommodation at the one hotel if they refused his further hospitality. So in half an hour Senor Jose's carriage of state was harnessed and the four journeyed into El Ciudad Grande.
What this was I fancied I understood only too well, by the fashion in which she kept drawing her little hand backward and forward under her chin. I was inclined to think she wanted to have somebody's throat cut, and I had a fair suspicion the throat in question was my own. To all her torrent of eloquence Don Jose's only reply was two or three shortly spoken words.
Shortly before José's birth his family had built a pretentious new home in the center of Kalamba on a lot which Francisco Mercado had inherited from his brother. The house was destroyed before its usefulness had ceased, by the vindictiveness of those who hated the man-child that was born there.
There he employed another to transport him through the Verret Canal to the lakes, and on through these to Marie Jose's landing, in Attakapas; then another was engaged to take him up the Teche to St. Martinsville, and from there he went by land to Opelousas. This route is nearly three hundred miles.
A print of the Virgin, a souvenir of this pilgrimage, was, according to the custom of those times, pasted inside José's wooden chest when he left home for school; later on it was preserved in an album and went with him in all his travels.
Conversions soon followed, and, on the 7th of July, 1760, the first Indian baby was baptized, an event which, as Father Jose piously records, "exceeds the richnesse of gold or precious jewels or the chancing upon the Ophir of Solomon." I quote this incident as best suited to show the ingenious blending of poetry and piety which distinguished Father Jose's record.
Eight or ten miles, he estimated it roughly; for he had passed José's hacienda some time before, and had resisted the temptation to turn aside and find out if Manuel were there or had gone on.
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