“Fire!”
“I ask you because, in that case, I might help you.”
“What a town! But what a town!” exclaimed the soldier, removing his shako, and laying aside sword and shoulder-belt, travelling case and cloak. “This is the second time they have sent us here. I swear to you that the third time I will ask my discharge.”
“Don’t talk ill of these good people! But you have come in the nick of time. It seems as if Providence has sent you to my aid, Pinzon. I have a terrible project on hand, an adventure,—a plot, if you wish to call it so, my friend,—and it would have been difficult for me to carry it through without you. A moment ago I was in despair, wondering how I should manage, and saying to myself anxiously, ‘If I only had a friend here, a good friend!’”
“A project, a plot, an adventure! One of two things, Señor Mathematician: it is either the discovery of aerial navigation, or else some love affair.”
“It is serious, very serious. Go to bed, sleep a while, and afterward we will talk about it.”
“I will go to bed, but I will not sleep. You may say all you wish to me. All that I ask is that you will say as little as possible about Orbajosa.”
“It is precisely about Orbajosa that I wish to speak to you. But have you also an antipathy to this cradle of illustrious men?”
“These garlic-venders—we call them the garlic-venders—may be as illustrious as you choose, but to me they are as irritating as the product of the country. This is a town ruled by people who teach distrust, superstition, and hatred of the whole human race. When we have leisure I will relate to you an occurrence—an adventure, half-comic, half-tragic—that happened to me here last year. When I tell it to you, you will laugh and I shall be fuming. But, in fine, what is past is past.”
“In what is happening to me there is nothing comic.”