s rather to increase
upon me than to be overcome. This afternoon, senor, I will send a few of
the ancient manuscripts to you. And so--until we meet again."

II.

THE CACIQUE'S SECRET.

Fray Antonio punctually fulfilled his promise in regard to the
manuscripts, and I had but to glance at them in order to understand the
smile that he had interchanged with Don Rafael when I so airily had
expressed my confidence in my ability to read them. To say that I more
easily could read Hebrew is not to the purpose, for I can read Hebrew
very well; but it is precisely to the purpose to say that I could not
read them at all! What with the curious, involved formation of the
several letters, the extraordinary abbreviations, the antique spelling,
the strange forms of expression, and the use of obsolete words I could
not make sense of so much as a single line. Yet when, being forced into
inglorious surrender, I carried the manuscripts to the Museo, and
appealed to Don Rafael for assistance, he read to me in fluent Spanish
all that I had found so utterly incomprehensible. "It is only a knack,"
he explained. "A little time and patience are required at first, but
then all comes easily." But Don Rafael did here injustice to his own
scholarship. More than a little time and patience have I since given to
the study of ancient Spanish script, and I am even yet very far from
being an expert in the reading of it.

In regard to the other promise that Fray Antonio made me--that he would
send me a servant who also would serve as a practical instructor in the
Nahua, or Aztec, dialect--he was equally punctual. While I was taking,
in my bedroom, my first breakfast of bread and coffee the morning
following my visit to the church of San Francisco, I heard a faint sound
of music; but whether it was loud music at a distance or very soft music
near at hand I could not tell. Presently I perceived that the musician
was feeling about among the notes for the sabre song from _La Grande
Duchesse_--selections from which semi-obsolete opera, as I then
remembered, had been played by the military band on the plaza the
evening before. Gradually the playing grew more assured; until it ended
in an accurate and spirited rendering of the air. With this triumph, the
volume of the sound increased greatly; and from its tones I inferred
that the instrument was a concertina, and that whoever played it was in
the inner court-yard of the hotel. Suddenly, in the midst of