"Don Fabrique," reiterated our host, aghast at the name; "ah, he is too great a man to be easily arrested, señor."
"Is he not a mere ladrone?"
"True, Caballero; but then his band is numerous. Yes, señor; Ave Maria purissima!—tiene con exercito de 10,000 hombres—all determined men, and armed to the teeth."
"Ten thousand men—nonsense! A hundred, more probably."
The host felt his veracity impugned, and he called upon all the saints in the calendar to witness the truth of his assertions; and while we had a decanter of wine before starting, he told us a vast number of anecdotes, descriptive of the cruel and unscrupulous character of the so-called Don Fabrique. Two of these occurred to me as being peculiarly diabolical in their nature.
On one occasion he plundered the house of a wealthy merchant near Estephana, a town on the Grenada coast; and because the unfortunate proprietor would not yield up the alleged treasures of his strong box, and sign bills on his bankers in Seville, Fabrique snatched up a camphine lamp from a marble side-table, and, with a dreadful oath, poured the contents over the hair and whiskers of his prisoner. He then deliberately applied a lighted candle thereto, and in a moment the whole face and head of the miserable man were enveloped in flames. His skull was roasted like a large castano, and he died in great misery—his head being literally burned off!
Another amiable little trait of Don Fabrique was the strange way he took to remove his predecessor from the command of the troop. This was a rough old guerilla, who in his youth had fought in the campaigns of Wellington, under Don Julian Sanchez, the famous Captain Harelip, as our soldiers named him, and latterly in the service of the Carlists, under the banished Conde de Morella.
The robber captain—Gomes el Guerilla—having incurred the animosity of Fabrique, that worthy procured some gun-cotton (which our patron believed to be a preparation by the devil himself), from a drug-chest, when investigating the shop of a botarico (apothecary) at Castellar; and some of this he placed in the folds of Gomes' neckcloth in the night, and for three days the old and unsuspecting sinner wore this dreadful thing under his well-bearded chin. On the third, Fabrique, who began to lose patience, and vow to have vengeance on the botarico, said, "Come, señor, let us make up a little cigar;" so the cigar was made, and they proceeded to smoke, until some sparks fell on the breast of the old guerilla; and then, Madre de Dios! there was a dreadful flash and explosion like that of a cannon; and to the consternation of all his band, the head of Gomes was blown right off his shoulders, and not a vestige of it was ever seen again.
"The noble Caballeros," continued our host, "have no doubt heard of the great robber-chief, Manuel de Cordova, who in January, 1853, killed the commandant of the civic guard of Bute?"
"No."