"I despise these people as much as I hate them."
André Certa concealed the fact of his having been repulsed by several noble families, into which he had sought to introduce himself.
His interlocutor still wore an expression of doubt, and the brow of the mestizo had contracted, when the latter was rudely elbowed by a man of tall stature, whose gray hairs proclaimed him to be at least fifty, while the muscular force of his firmly knit limbs seemed undiminished by age.
This man was clad in a brown vest, through which appeared a coarse shirt with a broad collar; his short breeches, striped with green, were fastened by red garters to stockings of clay-color; on his feet were sandals made of ojotas, ox-hide prepared for this purpose; beneath his high-pointed hat gleamed large ear-rings. His complexion was dark. After having jostled André Certa, he looked at him fixedly, but with no particular expression.
"Miserable Indian!" exclaimed the mestizo, raising his hand upon him.
His companions restrained him. Milleflores, whose face was pale with terror, exclaimed:
"André! André! take care."
"A vile slave! to presume to elbow me!"
"It is a madman! it is the Sambo!"
The Sambo, as the name indicated, was an Indian of the mountains; he continued to fix his eyes on the mestizo, whom he had intentionally jostled. The latter, whose anger was unbounded, had seized a poignard at his girdle, and was about to have rushed on the impassable aggressor, when a guttural cry, like that of the cilguero, (a kind of linnet of Peru,) re-echoed in the midst of the tumult of promenaders, and the Sambo disappeared.