The lesson over, Don Renaldo gone, Patsy summed up his case. “A spent shot!” he said, “a poor thing, as capable of taking care of himself as a year old baby; more coals to Tio Jorge!”
One happy day, when we had almost given up hope of ever seeing him again, Don Jaime strolled jauntily into the patio, his sombrero gallantly cocked on one side, his worn coat carefully brushed, his trousers newly creased, a bunch of violets in his buttonhole. He was greeted with shrieks and screams of joy. Black coffee and un poco de ginevra de campagna (his only vices) were immediately ordered for him.
“I arrive only at middle night yesterday,” he said, when accused of desertion. “I have made a loose, my brother-in-law, he is daid.” Patsy asked if it was the husband of his sister who had died.
“Ah, no! brother to my woman. Me, my father, my grandfather were all unique childs; I have no sister—only a half a sister, Candalaria,—no brother, no honkle, no haunt; I am a widow and a horphan.” We expressed sympathy for his loss. The Don assured us that his brother-in-law’s death was a release.
“Poor man! he was secluded in—how you say? an insanitorium these long years. When he was daid, he had himself embaumed and transported to Cadiz, where is the pantheon of himself and his wife.”
“We were just starting to drive to Italica,” said J. “You’ll go with us, Don? Where’s your capa? You’ll need it; it’s cold this afternoon.”
“Ah, no! I am warm inside, since I drinked the ginevra,” he patted his stomach. “Ah well, it is heatier in Sevillia than in Cadiz, where I goed to escort the catafalque of my brother.”
After that J. and Patsy took the Don away from me, and all that afternoon they kept him to themselves. I followed in another carriage with Pemberton. Bursts of riotous laughter came to us from their cab, as they passed us on the Alameda of Hercules. At the foot of that pleasant, shady mall, our coachman drew up under a pair of tall, gray granite columns.
“The old columns are from a Roman temple,” said Pemberton. “These guardians of the town,” he pointed to the battered old statue that stood on either column, “are Hercules the founder, and Julius Cæsar the second founder of Seville. Oh, yes! Hercules was here; he stopped and rested by the river, and founded Seville that time he wandered through the Peninsula, driving the lowing herds of Geyron before him.”
We had crossed the tawny Guadalquiver, and were driving through Triano, the potters’ suburb, named for the Emperor Trajan. An open doorway gave us a glimpse of a man working a wheel with his feet, and holding a newly moulded clay vase in his hands against the swiftly turning wheel.