"When did you learn to read, son of a mangy she-wolf?" asked the doctor in great surprise.
"When I was but five. My mother taught me letters. She is a woman of honest birth and of education," answered Jacinto proudly. "When she was a child, she was sent to the convent of Santa Ursola in Granada."
"And what do you think of this swashbuckler, Pizarro? He robbed the Indians of their golden suns and chalices and their silver bars, without morality and without ruth, did he not? But—do you think him cruel?"
The boy nodded his head slowly. Then with the oldish quaintness of a book-bitten child, he explained:
"I do think him cruel, mi senor don. But he would not have been Pizarro had he been soft-handed and pitiful. He led three hundred and fifty Spanish caballeros and four thousand Indians deep into the cordilleras. About him were the millions of the Inca Empire. If he had been less brave, less strong, less cruel, those many Peruvians would have swirled about him like the waters of an ocean, and engulfed him and his poor few Conquistadores. But he knew how to be most cruel. That was why he conquered. That was why he was altogether the great captain!"
When first he discovered Jacinto in his library, Don Jaime had been of the mind to send him bundling, and to lock the door between the peasant boy and his precious old books. Now he turned about abruptly, said "Humph!" and went thoughtfully away.
At last, came an arriero to take Jacinto Quesada back to Minas de la Sierra. She stood beside the mule upon which Jacinto mounted, the golden-haired little Felicidad, and held up her small fat hands for him to kiss. The hidalgo doctor watched his departure from the dark of the doorway. He looked after the great dust-cloud on the brown road for a long time.
"The Little Wolf!" he muttered in his morose way. "He was as famished for knowledge as he was for food. He would have gone blind if he lingered in my library much longer. To see him rip the entrails out of Bernal Diaz's 'Cortes' and the Lives of Balboa, De Soto, Coronado—what a joy! He has eyes of gold for seeing things clearly—for seeing beyond good and evil. And he has a heart of fire, he has gusto, that Spanish boy! Pizarro was cruel, but he was great, he was magnificent, because he was cruel! What a Spanish answer!
"Por los Clavos de Cristo! he will go far, that mountain brat! He will be a great realist and philosopher like Cervantes. Or he will be a great dramatist like Lope de Vega. Or a great poet or statesman. Or a great captain like the Conquistadores whose lives he studied with such gusto and whose strength he analyzed with such clear-sightedness!"
Then Don Jaime smiled very bitterly. For the moment he had forgotten that his Jacinto Quesada had been born a Spaniard of the people. He swore a vile oath.