"'Oh, si yo naciera ciego!
Oh, tú sin beldad nacieras!
Maldito sea el punto—'"[1]
The Indian seemed to listen with sustained attention, his body bent well forward, and his eyes obstinately fixed on the singer. Don Cornelio felicitated himself internally on the effect he fancied he had produced on this primitive native, when suddenly Curumilla, seizing him by the hips, squeezed him in his nervous hands at in iron pincers, and lifting him with as much ease as if he had been but a child, carried him, spite of his resistance, into the patio, and seated him on the side of the wall.
"Wah!" he said, "music is good here."
And, without adding another word, he turned his back on the Spaniard, walked into his cuarto, laid himself on his zarapé, and went to sleep immediately.
At first Don Cornelio was quite confounded by this sudden attack, and knew not if he ought to laugh or feel vexed at the simple way in which his companion had got rid of his company; but Don Cornelio was a philosopher, gifted with an admirable character. What had happened to him seemed so droll that he burst into an Homeric laugh, which lasted several minutes.
"No matter," he said, when he had at length regained his seriousness, "the adventure is curious, and I shall laugh at it for many a long day. After all, the fellow was not entirely in the wrong. I am famously situated here to sing and play my jarana as long as I think proper; at any rate I shall run no risk of disturbing the sleepers, as I am quite alone."
And after this consolation, which he administered to himself to satisfy his somewhat offended pride, he prepared to continue his serenade.
The night was clear and serene; the sky was studded with a profusion of stars, in the midst of which sparkled the dazzling southern cross; a slight breeze, laden with the perfumes of the desert, gently refreshed the air; the deepest silence brooded over San José; for, in the retired Mexican pueblos, everybody returns home at an early hour. Everybody appeared asleep, too, in the mesón, although at a few windows the weak and dying light of the candles gleamed behind the cotton curtains.
Thus Don Cornelio, unconsciously yielding to the influences of this magnificent evening, omitted the first four verses of the romancero, and after a skilful prelude, struck up the sublime description of night:—
"A l'escaso resplendor,
De cualque luciente estrella,
Que en el medroso silencio,
Tristamente centellea."[2]