They were gay and noisy—some half intoxicated with pulque, and inclined to be quarrelsome. The leperos, no longer in awe of their own national authorities, were demeaning themselves with a degree of licence allowed by the abnormal character of the times.
In my progress along the pavement I was several times accosted in a coarse bantering mariner; not on account of my American uniform—for my cloak concealed this—but because I wore a cloak! I was taken for a native “aristocrat.”
Better that it was so: since the insults were only verbal, and offered in a spirit of rude badinage. Had my real character been known, they might have been accompanied by personal violence.
I had not gone far before becoming aware of this; and that I had started upon a rash, not to say perilous, enterprise.
It was of that nature, however, that I could not give it up; even had I been threatened with ten times the danger.
I continued on, holding my cloak in such a fashion, that it might not flap open.
By good luck I had taken the precaution to cover my head with a Mexican sombrero, instead of the military cap; and as for the gold stripes on my trowsers, they were but the fashion of the Mexican majo.
A walk of twenty minutes brought me into the Calle del Obispo.
Compared with some of the streets, through which I had been passing, it seemed deserted. Only two or three solitary pedestrians could be seen traversing it, under the dim light of half a dozen oil lamps set at long distances apart.