“DESPERTA FERRO”
About this time the following items of news appeared in the Madrid
newspapers:
“There is no truth whatever in the report that there has been an
insurrection in the neighborhood of Orbajosa. Our correspondent in that
place informs us that the country is so little disposed for adventures
that the further presence of the Batalla brigade in that locality is
considered unnecessary.”
“It is said that the Batalla brigade will leave Orbajosa, as troops are
not required there, to go to Villajuan de Nahara, where guerillas have
made their appearance.”
“The news has been confirmed that the Aceros, with a number of mounted
followers, are ranging the district of Villajuan, adjacent to the
judicial district of Orbajosa. The governor of the province of X. has
telegraphed to the Government that Francisco Acero entered Las Roquetas,
where he demanded provisions and money. Domingo Acero (Faltriquera), was
ranging the Jubileo mountains, actively pursued by the Civil Guards, who
killed one of his men and captured another. Bartolome Acero is the man
who burned the registry office of Lugarnoble and carried away with him
as hostages the alcalde and two of the principal landowners.”
“Complete tranquillity reigns in Orbajosa, according to a letter which
we have before us, and no one there thinks of anything but cultivating
the garlic fields, which promise to yield a magnificent crop. The
neighboring districts, however, are infested with guerillas, but the
Batalla brigade will make short work of these.”
Orbajosa was, in fact, tranquil. The Aceros, that warlike dynasty,
worthy, in the opinion of some, of figuring in the “Romancero,” had
taken possession of the neighboring province; but the insurrection
was not spreading within the limits of the episcopal city. It might be
supposed that modern culture had at last triumphed in its struggle with
the turbulent habits of the great city of disorder, and that the latter
was tasting the delights of a lasting peace. So true is this that
Caballuco himself, one of the most important figures of the historic
rebellion of Orbajosa, said frankly to every one that he did not wish
to quarrel with the Government nor involve himself in a business which
might cost him dear.
Whatever may be said to the contrary, the impetuous nature of Ramos had
quieted down with years, and the fiery temper which he had received with
life from the ancestral Caballucos, the most valiant race of warriors
that had ever desolated the earth, had grown cooler. It is also related
that in those days the new governor of the province held a conference
with this important personage, and received from his lips the most
solemn assurances that he would contribute as far as in him lay to the
tranquillity of the country, and would avoid doing any thing that might
give rise to disturbances. Reliable witnesses declare that he was to be
seen in friendly companionship with the soldiers, hobnobbing with
this sergeant or the other in the tavern, and it was even said that an
important position in the town-hall of the capital of the province was
to be given him. How difficult it is for the historian who tries to be
impartial to arrive at the exact truth in regard to the sentiments and
opinions of the illustrious personages who have filled the world
with their fame! He does not know what to hold by, and the absence of
authentic records often gives rise to lamentable mistakes. Considering
events of such transcendent importance as that of the 18th Brumaire, the
sack of Rome by Bourbon, or the destruction of Jerusalem--where is the
psychologist or the historian who would be able to determine what were
the thoughts which preceded or followed them in the minds of Bonaparte,
of Charles V., and of Titus? Ours is an immense responsibility. To
discharge it in part we will report words, phrases, and even discourses
of the Orbajosan emperor himself; and in this way every one will be able
to form the opinion which may seem to him most correct.
It is beyond a doubt that Cristobal Ramos left his house just after
dark, crossed the Calle del Condestable, and, seeing three countrymen
mounted on powerful mules coming toward him, asked them where they
were going, to which they answered that they were going to Señora Doña
Perfecta’s house to take her some of the first fruits of their gardens
and a part of the rent that had fallen due. They were Señor Paso Largo,
a young man named Frasquito Gonzales, and a third, a man of medium
stature and robust make, who was called Vejarruco, although his real
name was José Esteban Romero. Caballuco turned back, tempted by the
agreeable society of these persons, who were old and intimate friends
of his, and accompanied them to Doña Perfecta’s house. This took place,
according to the most reliable accounts, at nightfall, and two days
after the day on which Doña Perfecta and Pinzon held the conversation
which those who have read the preceding chapter will have seen recorded
there. The great Ramos stopped for a moment to give Librada certain
messages of trifling importance, which a neighbor had confided to his
good memory, and when he entered the dining-room he found the three
before-mentioned countrymen and Señor Licurgo, who by a singular
coincidence was also there, conversing about domestic matters and the
crops. The Señora was in a detestable humor; she found fault with every
thing, and scolded them harshly for the drought of the heavens and the
barrenness of the earth, phenomena for which they, poor men! were in
no wise to blame. The Penitentiary was also present. When Caballuco
entered, the good canon saluted him affectionately and motioned him to a
seat beside himself.
“Here is the individual,” said the mistress of the house disdainfully.
“It seems impossible that a man of such little account should be so much
talked about. Tell me, Caballuco, is it true that one of the soldiers
slapped you on the face this morning?”
“Me! me!” said the Centaur, rising indignantly, as if he had received
the grossest insult.
“That is what they say,” said Doña Perfecta. “Is it not true? I believed
it; for any one who thinks so little of himself--they might spit in
your face and you would think yourself honored with the saliva of the
soldiers.”
“Señora!” vociferated Ramos with energy, “saving the respect which I
owe you, who are my mother, my mistress, my queen--saving the respect,
I say, which I owe to the person who has given me all that I
possess--saving the respect--”
“Well? One would think you were going to say something.”
“I say then, that saving the respect, that about the slap is a slander,”
he ended, expressing himself with extraordinary difficulty. “My affairs
are in every one’s mouth--whether I come in or whether I go out, where
I am going and where I have come from--and why? All because they want
to make me a tool to raise the country. Pedro is contented in his own
house, ladies and gentlemen. The troops have come? Bad! but what are we
going to do about it? The alcalde and the secretary and the judge have
been removed from office? Very bad! I wish the very stones of Orbajosa
might rise up against them; but I have given my word to the governor,
and up to the present---”
He scratched his head, gathered his gloomy brows in a frown, and with
ever-increasing difficulty of speech continued:
“I may be brutal, disagreeable, ignorant, quarrelsome, obstinate, and
every thing else you choose, but in honor I yield to no one.”
“What a pity of the Cid Campeador!” said Doña Perfecta contemptuously.
“Don’t you agree with me, Señor Penitentiary, that there is not a single
man left in Orbajosa who has any shame in him?”
“That is a serious view to take of the case,” responded the capitular,
without looking at his friend, or removing from his chin the hand on
which he rested his thoughtful face; “but I think this neighborhood has
accepted with excessive submission the heavy yoke of militarism.”
Licurgo and the three countrymen laughed boisterously.
“When the soldiers and the new authorities,” said Doña Perfecta, “have
taken from us our last real, when the town has been disgraced, we will
send all the valiant men of Orbajosa in a glass case to Madrid to be put
in the museum there or exhibited in the streets.”
“Long life to the mistress!” cried the man called Vejarruco
demonstratively. “What she says is like gold. It won’t be said on my
account that there are no brave men here, for if I am not with the
Aceros it is only because I have a wife and three children, and if any
thing was to happen--if it wasn’t for that--”
“But haven’t you given your word to the governor, too?” said Doña
Perfecta.
“To the governor?” cried the man named Frasquito Gonzalez. “There is not
in the whole country a scoundrel who better deserves a bullet. Governor
and Government, they are all of a piece. Last Sunday the priest said so
many rousing things in his sermon about the heresies and the profanities
of the people of Madrid--oh! it was worth while hearing him! Finally, he
shouted out in the pulpit that religion had no longer any defenders.”
“Here is the great Cristobal Ramos!” said Doña Perfecta, clapping the
Centaur on the back. “He mounts his horse and rides about in the Plaza
and up and down the high-road to attract the attention of the soldiers;
when they see him they are terrified at the fierce appearance of the
hero, and they all run away, half-dead with fright.”
Doña Perfecta ended with an exaggerated laugh, which the profound
silence of her hearers made still more irritating. Caballuco was pale.
“Señor Paso Largo,” continued the lady, becoming serious, “when you go
home to-night, send me your son Bartolome to stay here. I need to have
brave people in the house; and even with that it may very well happen
that, some fine morning, my daughter and myself will be found murdered
in our beds.”
“Señora!” exclaimed every one.
“Señora!” cried Caballuco, rising to his feet, “is that a jest, or what
is it?”
“Señor Vejarruco, Señor Paso Largo,” continued Doña Perfecta, without
looking at the bravo of the place, “I am not safe in my own house. No
one in Orbajosa is, and least of all, I. I live with my heart in my
mouth. I cannot close my eyes in the whole night.”
“But who, who would dare----”
“Come,” exclaimed Licurgo with fire, “I, old and sick as I am, would be
capable of fighting the whole Spanish army if a hair of the mistress’
head should be touched!”
“Señor Caballuco,” said Frasquito Gonzalez, “will be enough and more
than enough.”
“Oh, no,” responded Doña Perfecta, with cruel sarcasm, “don’t you see
that Ramos has given his word to the governor?”
Caballuco sat down again, and, crossing one leg over the other, clasped
his hands on them.
“A coward will be enough for me,” continued the mistress of the house
implacably, “provided he has not given his word to any one. Perhaps I
may come to see my house assaulted, my darling daughter torn from my
arms, myself trampled under foot and insulted in the vilest manner----”
She was unable to continue. Her voice died away in her throat, and she
burst into tears.
“Señora, for Heaven’s sake calm yourself! Come, there is no cause yet!”
said Don Inocencio hastily, and manifesting the greatest distress in his
voice and his countenance. “Besides, we must have a little resignation
and bear patiently the calamities which God sends us.”
“But who, señora, who would dare to commit such outrages?” asked one
of the four countrymen. “Orbajosa would rise as one man to defend the
mistress.”
“But who, who would do it?” they all repeated.
“There, don’t trouble yourselves asking useless questions,” said the
Penitentiary officiously. “You may go.”
“No, no, let them stay,” said Doña Perfecta quickly, drying her tears.
“The company of my loyal servants is a great consolation to me.”
“May my race be accursed!” said Uncle Licurgo, striking his knee with
his clenched hand, “if all this mess is not the work of the mistress’
own nephew.”
“Of Don Juan Rey’s son?”
“From the moment I first set eyes on him at the station at
Villahorrenda, and he spoke to me with his honeyed voice and his mincing
manners,” declared Licurgo, “I thought him a great--I will not say what,
through respect for the mistress. But I knew him--I put my mark upon him
from that moment, and I make no mistakes. A thread shows what the ball
is, as the saying goes; a sample tells what the cloth is, and a claw
what the lion is.”
“Let no one speak ill of that unhappy young man in my presence,” said
Señora de Polentinos severely. “No matter how great his faults may be,
charity forbids our speaking of them and giving them publicity.”
“But charity,” said Don Inocencio, with some energy, “does not forbid us
protecting ourselves against the wicked, and that is what the question
is. Since character and courage have sunk so low in unhappy Orbajosa;
since our town appears disposed to hold up its face to be spat upon by
half a dozen soldiers and a corporal, let us find protection in union
among ourselves.”
“I will protect myself in whatever way I can,” said Doña Perfecta
resignedly, clasping her hands. “God’s will be done!”
“Such a stir about nothing! By the Lord! In this house they are all
afraid of their shadows,” exclaimed Caballuco, half seriously, half
jestingly. “One would think this Don Pepito was a legion of devils.
Don’t be frightened, señora. My little nephew Juan, who is thirteen,
will guard the house, and we shall see, nephew for nephew, which is the
best man.”
“We all know already what your boasting and bragging signify,” replied
Doña Perfecta. “Poor Ramos! You want to pretend to be very brave when we
have already had proof that you are not worth any thing.”
Ramos turned slightly pale, while he fixed on Doña Perfecta a strange
look in which terror and respect were blended.
“Yes, man; don’t look at me in that way. You know already that I am not
afraid of bugaboos. Do you want me to speak plainly to you now? Well,
you are a coward.”
Ramos, moving about restlessly in his chair, like one who is troubled
with the itch, seemed greatly disturbed. His nostrils expelled and drew
in the air, like those of a horse. Within that massive frame a storm
of rage and fury, roaring and destroying, struggled to escape. After
stammering a few words and muttering others under his breath, he rose to
his feet and bellowed:
“I will cut off the head of Señor Rey!”
“What folly! You are as brutal as you are cowardly,” said Doña Perfecta,
turning pale. “Why do you talk about killing? I want no one killed, much
less my nephew--a person whom I love, in spite of his wickedness.”
“A homicide! What an atrocity!” exclaimed Don Inocencio, scandalized.
“The man is mad!”
“To kill! The very idea of killing a man horrifies me, Caballuco,” said
Doña Perfecta, closing her mild eyes. “Poor man! Ever since you have
been wanting to show your bravery, you have been howling like a ravening
wolf. Go away, Ramos; you terrify me.”
“Doesn’t the mistress say she is afraid? Doesn’t she say that they will
attack the house; that they will carry off the young lady?”
“Yes, I fear so.”
“And one man is going to do that,” said Ramos contemptuously, sitting
down again, “Don Pepe Poquita Cosa, with his mathematics, is going to do
that. I did wrong in saying I would slit his throat. A doll of that kind
one takes by the ear and ducks in the river.”
“Yes, laugh now, you fool! It is not my nephew alone who is going to
commit the outrages you have mentioned and which I fear; if it were he
alone I should not fear him. I would tell Librada to stand at the door
with a broom--and that would be sufficient. It is not he alone, no!”
“Who then?”
“Pretend you don’t understand! Don’t you know that my nephew and the
brigadier who commands that accursed troop have been confabulating?”
“Confabulating!” repeated Caballuco, as if puzzled by the word.
“That they are bosom friends,” said Licurgo. “Confabulate means to be
like bosom friends. I had my suspicions already of what the mistress
says.”
“It all amounts to this--that the brigadier and the officers are hand
and glove with Don José, and what he wants those brave soldiers
want; and those brave soldiers will commit all kinds of outrages and
atrocities, because that is their trade.”
“And we have no alcalde to protect us.”
“Nor judge.”
“Nor governor. That is to say that we are at the mercy of that infamous
rabble.”
“Yesterday,” said Vejarruco, “some soldiers enticed away Uncle Julian’s
youngest daughter, and the poor thing was afraid to go back home;
they found her standing barefooted beside the old fountain, crying and
picking up the pieces of her broken jar.”
“Poor Don Gregorio Palomeque, the notary of Naharilla Alta!” said
Frasquito. “Those rascals robbed him of all the money he had in his
house. And all the brigadier said, when he was told about it, was it was
a lie.”
“Tyrants! greater tyrants were never born,” said the other. “When I say
that it is through punctilio that I am not with the Aceros!”
“And what news is there of Francisco Acero?” asked Doña Perfecta gently.
“I should be sorry if any mischance were to happen to him. Tell me, Don
Inocencio, was not Francisco Acero born in Orbajosa?”
“No; he and his brother are from Villajuan.”
“I am sorry for it, for Orbajosa’s sake,” said Doña Perfecta. “This poor
city has fallen into misfortune. Do you know if Francisco Acero gave
his word to the governor not to trouble the poor soldiers in their
abductions, in their impious deeds, in their sacrilegious acts, in their
villanies?”
Caballuco sprang from his chair. He felt himself now not stung, but
cut to the quick by a cruel stroke, like that of a sabre. With his face
burning and his eyes flashing fire he cried:
“I gave my word to the governor because the governor told me that they
had come for a good purpose.”
“Barbarian, don’t shout! Speak like other people, and we will listen to
you.”
“I promised that neither I nor any of my friends would raise guerillas
in the neighborhood of Orbajosa. To those who wanted to take up arms
because they were itching to fight I said: ‘Go to the Aceros, for here
we won’t stir.’ But I have a good many honest men, yes, señora; and true
men, yes, señora; and valiant men, yes, señora; scattered about in the
hamlets and villages and in the suburbs and the mountains, each in his
own house, eh? And so soon as I say a quarter of a word to them, eh?
they will be taking down their guns, eh? and setting out on horseback
or on foot, for whatever place I tell them. And don’t keep harping on
words, for if I gave my word it was because I don’t wish to fight; and
if I want guerillas there will be guerillas; and if I don’t there won’t,
for I am who I am, the same man that I always was, as every one knows
very well. And I say again don’t keep harping on words, eh? and don’t
let people say one thing to me when they mean another, eh? and if people
want me to fight, let them say so plainly, eh? for that is what God has
given us tongues for, to say this thing or that. The mistress knows very
well who I am, as I know that I owe to her the shirt on my back, and the
bread I eat to-day, and the first pea I sucked after I was weaned, and
the coffin in which my father was buried when he died, and the medicines
and the doctor that cured me when I was sick; and the mistress knows
very well that if she says to me, ‘Caballuco, break your head,’ I will
go there to the corner and dash it against the wall; the mistress knows
very well that if she tells me now that it is day, although I see that
it is night, I will believe that I am mistaken, and that it is broad
day; the mistress knows very well that she and her interests are for me
before my own life, and that if a mosquito stings her in my presence, I
pardon it, because it is a mosquito; the mistress knows very well that
she is dearer to me than all there is besides under the sun. To a man
of heart like me one says, ‘Caballuco, you stupid fellow, do this or do
that.’ And let there be an end to sarcasms, and beating about the bush,
and preaching one thing and meaning another, and a stab here and a pinch
there.”
“There, man, calm yourself,” said Doña Perfecta kindly. “You have worked
yourself into a heat like those republican orators who came here to
preach free religion, free love, and I don’t know how many other free
things. Let them bring you a glass of water.”
Caballuco, twisting his handkerchief into a ball, wiped with it his
broad forehead and his neck, which were bathed in perspiration. A glass
of water was brought to him and the worthy canon, with a humility that
was in perfect keeping with his sacerdotal character, took it from the
servant’s hand to give it to him himself, and held the plate while he
drank. Caballuco gulped down the water noisily.
“Now bring another glass for me, Señora Librada,” said Don Inocencio. “I
have a little fire inside me too.”