"During our absence the impresario happened along and asked: 'Are those Spanish gymnasts going to perform at such a height?' 'That's what they said,' answered the carpenter. 'Let them know, then, that I don't want to be responsible for such barbarity.'
"Pérez and I were in the hotel, when we received a message calling us to the circus at once."
"'What can it be?' my companion asked me. 'You'll see,' I told him.
'They're going to demand that we lower the trapeze.'
"And so it was. Pérez and I go to the circus and we see the impresario. That was what he requested.
"'Nothing doing,' I told him. 'Not even if the President of the Republic of the United States himself comes here, together with his esteemed mother. I won't lower the trapeze an inch.' 'Then you'll be compelled to.' 'We'll see.' The impresario summoned a policeman; I showed the fellow my contract, and he sided with me; he told me that my companion and I had a perfect right to break our necks…."
"What a country!" murmured Roberto, ironically.
"You're right," agreed Don Alonso in all seriousness. "What a country.
That's what you call progress!
"That night, in the circus, before we went on, Pérez and I listened to the comments of the public. 'What? Are these Spaniards going to perform at such an altitude?' the people were asking each other. 'They'll kill themselves.' And we listened calmly, all the time smiling.
"We were about to enter the ring, when along comes a fellow with sailor's chinwhiskers wearing a flat-brimmed high hat and a carrick, and in a twanging voice he tells us that we're in danger of having a terrible accident performing 'way up there, and that, if we wish, we can take out life insurance. All we'd have to do is to sign a few papers that he had in his hand. Lord! I nearly died. I felt like choking the fellow.
"Trembling and screwing up our courage, Pérez and I entered the ring. We had to put on a little rouge. We wore a blue costume decorated with silver stars,—a reference to the United States flag; we saluted and then, up the rope.