“Do you feel like a prince?” demanded Diego. “Martin Alonzo promised we should be such, you remember.”
“I don’t know how a prince feels,” answered Juan, with a laugh; “but I don’t believe he can feel any better than I do.”
“I wish I could find some of that gold he talked of,” said Diego.
“Have you tried your Latin with them?” asked Juan.
“I did not think it worth while. Luis de Torres, the converted Jew, spoke to them, as you heard, in I don’t know how many languages, and they only stared at him and shook their heads, wondering, I suppose, how he ever twisted his tongue around so many odd sounds. I thought, myself, that he would lose all that remained of his teeth when he spoke in Hebrew. No, I have not tried my Latin; though, now you speak of it, it may be not amiss; for the Jew’s accent was not very good. Say, old man!” he raised his voice and looked at an old man, who had watched the two boys with an extraordinary interest, but had yet approached near to them, having but recently come from a neighboring village.
When he saw that he was spoken to, he stood up and showed himself a very respectable and dignified person; though, as Diego said to Juan, most hideously painted on the face. Diego beckoned him to come nearer, and began in Latin, Juan listening attentively and with as much respect, almost, as the natives. But Diego had not said three words before he sprang from the ground and agitatedly caught the old man by the nose and led him, considerably startled and dismayed, to where the sun streamed into an open spot in the woods.
Juan followed anxiously, a vague fear troubling him lest Diego was going to do some violence to the old man. But that was not his intention; though Juan might be excused for suspecting him. What he did was to turn the old man’s head, using his nose as a sort of handle, until the light struck athwart it. Then he took his hand away and cried out, at the same time dancing:
“Gold! gold! gold!” There was a ring of that metal in the old man’s nose.