lost my corporal's stripes, and
was condemned to a month's imprisonment. It was the first time I had
been punished since I had been in the service. Farewell, now, to the
sergeant's stripes, on which I had reckoned so surely!

"The first days in prison were very dreary. When I enlisted I had
fancied I was sure to become an officer, at all events. Two of
my compatriots, Longa and Mina, are captains-general, after all.
Chapalangarra was a colonel, and I have played tennis a score of times
with his brother, who was just a needy fellow like myself. 'Now,' I kept
crying to myself, 'all the time you served without being punished
has been lost. Now you have a bad mark against your name, and to get
yourself back into the officers' good graces you'll have to work ten
times as hard as when you joined as a recruit.' And why have I got
myself punished? For the sake of a gipsy hussy, who made game of me, and
who at this moment is busy thieving in some corner of the town. Yet I
couldn't help thinking about her. Will you believe it, sir, those silk
stockings of hers with the holes in them, of which she had given me such
a full view as she took to her heels, were always before my eyes? I
used to look through the barred windows of the jail into the street,
and among all the women who passed I never could see one to compare with
that minx of a girl--and then, in spite of myself, I used to smell the
acacia blossom she had thrown at me, and which, dry as it was, still
kept its sweet scent. If there are such things as witches, that girl
certainly was one.

"One day the jailer came in, and gave me an Alcala roll.*

* _Alcala de los Panaderos_, a village two leagues from
Seville, where the most delicious rolls are made. They are
said to owe their quality to the water of the place, and
great quantities of them are brought to Seville every day.

"'Look here,' said he, 'this is what your cousin has sent you.'

"I took the loaf, very much astonished, for I had no cousin in Seville.
It may be a mistake, thought I, as I looked at the roll, but it was so
appetizing and smelt so good, that I made up my mind to eat it, without
troubling my head as to whence it came, or for whom it was really
intended.

"When I tried to cut it, my knife struck on something hard. I looked,
and found a little English file, which had been slipped into the dough
before the roll had been baked. The roll also contained a gold piece of
two piastres.