She was lifted up and every care was bestowed upon her. When she recovered consciousness a torrent of tears streamed from her eyes, and continued all the afternoon. And when the party started for home she was still weeping.
"Did you see that this girl of Estrada-Rosa cried from the effects of wine?" said Captain Nuñez, laughing.
CHAPTER IX
THE MASQUERADE
Shortly before the rosy dawn opened wide the windows of the East, Satan, who rose in a mischievous humour, sent the most knavish and wanton of the demons to Lancia with orders to awaken it from its slumbers. So the minister of hell waved his black wings over the city, and gave vent to loud discordant laughter, which was effectual in arousing all the inhabitants from their dreams. They awoke with the most immoderate desires to upset, make fun of, and laugh at all ruling authorities, to improvise couplets, and say rude things. One of these people, we can imagine it must have been Jaime Moro, called his servant directly he had jumped out of bed, and asked him with a smiling countenance if Don Nicanor, the bass of the cathedral, would lend him his instrument. The servant without replying, instantly left the room, and soon reappeared with an enormous serpent (wind instrument) in his hands. And without any respect for his master, he applied the mouthpiece to his lips and produced a sound like the roaring of a lion. Moro, lightly attired as he was, made a pirouet and gave three or four taps of the heel in sign of great appreciation, as if that barbarous sound had touched the most delicate fibres of his heart. After trying himself to produce the same noise and ascertaining that he was quite equal to the achievement, he dressed himself, and after taking a hurried breakfast, he sallied into the street, wrapped in his cloak, under the folds of which he had put the instrument that had so delighted him. He stopped everybody with a mysterious wink, and retiring to the nearest portico, he, full of excitement, showed them his hidden treasure. Nobody asked what he was going to do with it. They smiled, squeezed his hand significantly, and whispered in his ear:
"When is it to be?"
"To-night. The carriage leaves at twelve."
"They will escape us."
"Bah! all precautions are taken."
And he went on his way muffled up to the eyes, for the cold was indeed diabolical.