“Oho! is that the game?” said Governor Manco; he gave orders, and immediately a gibbet was reared on the verge of the great beetling bastion that overlooked the Plaza. “Now,” said he, in a message to the captain-general, “hang my soldier when you please; but at the same time that he is swung off in the square, look up to see your Escribano dangling against the sky.”
The captain-general was inflexible; troops were paraded in the square; the drums beat; the bell tolled; an immense multitude of amateurs had collected to behold the execution; on the other hand, the governor paraded his garrison on the bastion, and tolled the funeral dirge of the notary from the Torre de la Campana, or tower of the bell.
The notary’s wife pressed through the crowd with a whole progeny of little embryo Escribanoes at her heels, and throwing herself at the feet of the captain-general implored him not to sacrifice the life of her husband and the welfare of herself and her numerous little ones to a point of pride.
The captain-general was overpowered by her tears and lamentations, and the clamors of her callow brood. The corporal was sent up to the Alhambra under a guard, in his gallows garb, like a hooded friar; but with head erect and a face of iron. The Escribano was demanded in exchange, according to the cartel. The once bustling and self-sufficient man of the law was drawn forth from his dungeon, more dead than alive. All his flippancy and conceit had evaporated; his hair, it is said, had nearly turned gray with fright, and he had a downcast, dogged look, as if he still felt the halter round his neck.
The old governor stuck his one arm akimbo, and for a moment surveyed him with an iron smile. “Henceforth, my friend,” said he, “moderate your zeal in hurrying others to the gallows; be not too certain of your own safety, even though you should have the law on your side; and, above all, take care how you play off your schoolcraft another time upon an old soldier.”
[20-1] The Alhambra was the fortified palace, or citadel, of the Moorish kings when they reigned over Granada, in Spain. It was built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and is one of the most beautiful examples of Moorish architecture.
[20-2] A toledo is a sword having a blade made at Toledo, in Spain, a place famous for blades of remarkably fine temper and great elasticity.
[21-3] Imperium in imperio is a Latin phrase meaning a government within a government.
[22-4] Contrabandista is a Spanish name for a smuggler.