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Read Ebook: The city of the discreet by Baroja P O Fassett Jacob S Jacob Sloat Translator
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Ebook has 3750 lines and 85721 words, and 75 pages
"Those gentlemen," asked the Frenchman in an undertone, as he leaned over to Quentin, "What are they--toreadors?"
"No,--rich folk from hereabouts."
"Hidalgos, eh?"
"Pst! You shall see."
"They are talking a lot about gambling. One gambles a great deal in Andalusia, doesn't one?"
"Yes."
"I have heard some one say, that once a hidalgo was riding along on horseback, when he met a beggar. The horseman tossed him a silver coin, but the beggar, not wishing to accept it drew a pack of cards from among his rags and proposed a game to the hidalgo. He won the horse."
"Ha! Ha! Ha!" laughed Quentin boisterously.
"But isn't it true?" asked the Frenchman somewhat piqued.
"Perhaps--perhaps it is."
"What a simpleton!" murmured the countryman to himself.
"Isn't it true either, that all beggars have the right to use the 'Don'?"
"Yes, indeed, that's true enough," answered Quentin, smiling his gipsy smile.
The three husky youths in the shawls got off at the next station to Cordova. The sky cleared for an instant: up and down the platform walked men with broad-brimmed Andalusian hats, young women with flowers in their hair, old women with huge, red umbrellas....
"And those young men who just went by," asked the Frenchman, full of curiosity about everything, "each one carries his knife, eh?"
"Oh, yes!--Probably," said Quentin, unconsciously imitating his interlocutor's manner of speech.
"The knives they carry are very large?"
"The knives! Yes, very large."
"What might their dimensions be?"
"Two or three spans," asserted Quentin, to whom a span more or less mattered very little.
"And is it hard to manage that terrible weapon?"
"It has its difficulties."
"Do you know how?"
"Naturally. But the really difficult thing is to hit a mark with a knife at a distance of twenty or thirty metres."
"How do they do that?"
"Why, there's nothing much to it. You place the knife like this," and Quentin assumed that he had placed one in the palm of his hand, "and then you throw it with all your might. The knife flies like an arrow, and sticks wherever you wish."
"How horrible!"
"A ca--a cha--a what?"
"It is truly extraordinary," said the Frenchman, after attempting in vain to pronounce the guttural. "You have doubtless killed bulls also?"
"Oh! yes, indeed."
"But you are very young."
"Twenty-two."
"Didn't you tell me that you have been in England for eight years?"
"Yes."
"So you killed bulls when you were fourteen?"
"No ... in my vacations."
"Ah! You came from England just for that?"
"Yes--for that, and to see my sweetheart."
The Frenchwoman smiled, and her husband said:
"Weren't you afraid?"
"Afraid of which?--The bulls, or my sweetheart?"
"Of both!" exclaimed the Frenchman, laughing heartily.
"What a simpleton!" reiterated the countryman, smiling, and looking at him as he would at a child.
"And if you don't have time to do that?" questioned the Frenchman rather anxiously.
"Then you may count yourself among the departed, and beg them to say a few masses for the salvation of your soul."
"It is frightful--And the ladies are very enthusiastic over a good toreador, eh?"
"Of course--on account of the profession."
"What do you mean by 'on account of the profession'?"
"Don't the ladies bully us?"
"That's true," said the countryman, smiling.
"And he who fights best," continued the Frenchman, "will have the doors of society opened to him?"
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