peaks," interrupted Jago, "what every guachinango[37] in Mexico sings
over his pulque. But love blinds, they say. May I beg to know what you are
doing on this road?"

"Mind your own business," replied the angry nobleman, turning his back
haughtily upon his interrogator, who gazed at him for a moment with a look
of comical astonishment.

"Now, by my poor soul!" exclaimed the captain, "that is an amount of pride
which, if divided into a million of doses, would stock every Creole in
Mexico with the drug! But listen to me, young sir. All things have their
time, says the proverb, and some two years back this behaviour might have
been very suitable from your worship towards Jago the arriero; but times
are changed since a certain cura, named Hidalgo, hoisted the standard of
Mexican liberty. Ah! your nobility, always excepting the very noble Conde
San Jago, display their courage in tertulias and ballrooms, in intrigues
and camarilla conspiracies; but when it came to hard knocks they crept out
of the way, and left the poor priest of Dolores to help himself. Hidalgo
did not understand such tricks, and began in right earnest. You should
have seen Hidalgo--you would never have thought him the man he was. A
short, round, little fellow, with a sanguine smile and lively eyes, and a
complexion as olive-green as the Madeira bottles he was so fond of. His
head was bald; he used to say his bedstead was too short, and had rubbed
all his hair off; but in spite of that, and of his threescore years, he
had the sinews of a caguar and the strength of a giant; always on
horseback, and a splendid rider, for he had been a lancer in the
_presidios_, and had had many a fight with those devils of Comanches. Ah,
Hidalgo! you deserved a better fate!" concluded the patriot captain in a
saddened tone.

The young Creole had listened with some interest to this short but graphic
sketch of the remarkable man who first, with unexampled boldness, raised
the banner of Mexican liberty, and who, as well through the originality of
his private life, as through his political virtues and failings, had
become an object of idolatry to his friends, and of unappeasable hatred to
his opponents. Just as Jago finished speaking, Don Manuel's servants and
muleteers made their appearance upon the platform.

CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH.

"I long
To hear the story of your life, which must
Take the ear strangely."