They were on the Seville-to-Madrid that afternoon, when suddenly Felicidad thought:
"Has Jacques forgotten that he came to my father's house to purchase books—has he forgotten his matter-of-fact business in his overmastering love for me? He has neither paid my father for those books he selected, nor taken those books he selected away with him.
"I questioned Jacques. He laughed. He told me not to worry about his business affairs. But I continued to worry; I felt already a wife's interest and pride in my future husband's career; and I was much afraid that his employers in Paris would be angered by his careless handling of the whole transaction.
"When Jacques saw that I was still put out about him, he laughed again, this time heartily and long. Then suddenly he stopped laughing and, looking hard into my eyes, said in a cold, challenging voice:
"'Suppose I should tell you, ma chérie, that I am not in the employ of a Paris book house; that my business is not at all that of a purchaser of rare books; and that I care for rare books not a snap of the fingers!'"
Felicidad was thunderstruck and a little stunned. He saw the shocked expression on her face and thereat commenced, with a cruel malicious delight, to tell her other things.
He had been to the United States, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile; he had been to Egypt, Italy, England, and Sweden. He had been to Spain more than a dozen times before. He had had many adventures. But, strangely, these adventures were all adventures in crime. He had robbed cathedrals in France and Spain of their valuable paintings and jewels and even of their statuary. He had robbed museums and private collections of the New World.
He seemed to swell with pride, to grow with importance as he bared his real self thus to her. With snobbish care, he explained to her how far superior to ordinary criminals he was; he defined himself as one of a limited and ultra-clever aristocracy of thieves. It was as though he were showing a noble and praiseworthy side of himself hitherto unrevealed; it was as though he had wooed a peasant girl, while disguised in a most humble attire, and now lifted his vagabond's ragged cap to reveal a prince's crown. He said he was a member of the "White Wolves", an organization of French criminals who stole mostly from churches. He said he was a member of many other exclusive criminal fraternities.
When from the lips of Felicidad, Jacinto Quesada heard this last, he ejaculated:
"Carajo! So that was why, before we searched him, he made such queer signs to me—he was using thieves' signs, the signals of those criminal brotherhoods to which he belongs. He thought I, as another thief, might have some knowledge of that language of signs and that, out of a thief's respect for a thief, I might exempt him from the ordeal of the search!"