This apologue sounded very well, so admirably did the old man picture to us with voice and gesture the chattering excitement of the monkey and the majestic aplomb of the ox.
“Señor,” he continued, after the laugh had subsided, “I do not wish any of my friends and neighbours here present to fly to the conclusion that I have spoken anything offensive. Had I seen in you a Montevidean I should not have spoken of monkeys. But, señor, though you speak as we do, there is yet in the pepper and salt on your tongue a certain foreign flavour.”
“You are right,” I said; “I am a foreigner.”
“A foreigner in some things, friend, for you were doubtless born under other skies; but in that chief quality, which we think was given by the Creator to us and not to the people of other lands—the ability to be one in heart with the men you meet, whether they are clothed in velvet or in sheepskins—in that you are one of us, a pure Oriental.”
I smiled at his subtle flattery; possibly it was only meant in payment of the rum I had treated him to, but it pleased me none the less, and to his other mental traits I was now inclined to add a marvellous skill in reading character.
After a while he invited me to spend the night under his roof. “Your horse is fat and lazy,” he said with truth, “and, unless you are a relation of the owl family, you cannot go much farther before tomorrow. My house is a humble one, but the mutton is juicy, the fire warm, and the water cool there, the same as in another place.”
I readily accepted his invitation, wishing to see as much as I could of so original a character, and before starting I purchased a bottle of rum, which made his eyes sparkle so that I thought his name—Lucero—rather an appropriate one. His rancho was about two miles from the store, and our ride thither was about as strange a gallop as I ever took. Lucero was a domador, or horse-tamer, and the beast he rode was quite unbroken and vicious as it could be. Between horse and man a fierce struggle for mastery raged the whole time, the horse rearing, plunging, buck-jumping, and putting into practice every conceivable trick to rid itself of its burden; while Lucero plied whip and spur with tremendous energy and poured out torrents of strange adjectives. At one moment he would come into violent collision with my old sober beast, at another there would be fifty yards of ground between us; still Lucero would not stop talking, for he had begun a very interesting story at starting, and he stuck to his narrative through everything, resuming the thread after each tempest of execration vented on his horse, and raising his voice almost to a shout when we were far apart. The old fellow’s staying powers were really extraordinary, and when we arrived at the house he jumped airily to the ground, and seemed fresh and calm as possible.
In the kitchen were several people sipping maté, Lucero’s children and grandchildren, also his wife, a grey old dame with dim-looking eyes. But then my host was old in years himself, only, like Ulysses, he still possessed the unquenched fire and energy of youth in his soul, while time bestowed infirmities together with wrinkles and white hairs on his helpmate.
He introduced me to her in a manner that brought the modest flame to my cheeks. Standing before her, he said that he had met me at the pulperia and had put to me the question which a simple old countryman must ask of every traveller from Montevideo—What the news was? Then, assuming a dry, satirical tone, which years of practice would not enable me to imitate, he proceeded to give my fantastical answer, garnished with much original matter of his own.
“Señora,” I said, when he had finished, “you must not give me credit for all you have heard from your husband. I only gave him brute wool, and he has woven it for your delight into beautiful cloth.”
“Hear him! Did I tell you what to expect, Juana?” cried the old man, which made me blush still more.
We then settled down to maté and quiet conversation. Sitting in the kitchen on the skull of a horse—a common article of furniture in an Oriental rancho—was a boy about twelve years old, one of Lucero’s grandchildren, with a very beautiful face. His feet were bare and his clothes very poor, but his soft dark eyes and olive face had that tender, half-melancholy expression often seen in children of Spanish origin, which is always so strangely captivating.
“Where is your guitar, Cipriano?” said his grandfather, addressing him, whereupon the boy rose and fetched a guitar, which he first politely offered to me.
When I had
