"May I die," said the philosopher, in no little embarrassment, "but this lunatic Cura has left me to lug away his lucubrations,—his hieroglyphical infants, for which I am to make new coats,—on my own shoulders! Well! I can but carry them to the city, and seek some means of restoring them to his friends, or commit them to a more fitting depository. Pray heaven I meet no drunken Indian, or debauched soldado on my way."
By great good fortune, he was able, in a few days, with the assistance of a friendly Mexican, to solve the secret of the padre's confidence.
"You have seen him then?" said the excellent Señor Don Andres Santa-Maria de Arcaboba, laughing heartily at the grave earnestness with which his heretical friend inquired after the eccentric padre. "He offered you his hieroglyphics? Ah, I perceive! No man passes scot-free the crazy Cura. Ever his books in his hand, much praise with the offer, and seven times seven maledictions when you refuse his bantlings."
"He is crazy, then?"
"Demonios! were you long finding it out? Ever since the old archbishop burned his first heathenish volumes, he has done naught but——"
"I beg your pardon.—Burn his books?—the old archbishop?—Pray enlighten me a little on the subject of the good father's history.
"'Tis done in a moment," said Don Andres; "the only wonder is that he did not himself give you the story; that being, commonly, the prelude to his petition. The mother of Don Cristobal was an Indian damisela, delighting in the euphonical cognomen of Ixtlilxochitl; a name, which, I am told, belonged to some old pagan king or other, the Lord knows who—as for myself, I know nothing about it. But this set the padre mad, or, what's the same thing, it made him an historian.—'Tis a silly thing to trouble one's noddle about the concerns of our granddads: let them sleep! rest to their bones—Asi sea!—They made him a licenciado, and then Cura of some hacienda or other, out among the hills—I know nothing about it. He wrote a book, in which he proved that the old heathen Montezuma, the great Cacique, was a saint, and Hernan Cortes, who conquered the land, a sinner. It may be so—Quien sabe? who knows? who cares? This was before the revolution—that is, before the first: (we have had five hundred since;—I never counted them.) Somehow, the viceroy Vanegas took a dislike to the book, and so did the archbishop. They set their heads together, got the good old fathers of the Brotherhood—(We have no Brotherhood now,—neither religious nor social: every man is his own brother, as the king says in the English play.—Did you ever read Calderon?) They got the old fathers to vote it dangerous,—I suppose, because they did not understand it. So they burned it, and commanded Johualicahuatzin—(that's another Indian king—so he calls himself.—His father was the Señor Marhojo, a creole, a lieutenant in the viceroy's horse, a very worthy Christian, who was hanged somewhere, for sedition. But Cristobal writes after his mother's name, as being more royal.)—What was I saying? Oh, yes!—They ordered the licentiate back to his hacienda. Then, what became of him, the lord knows; I don't.—Then came Hidalgo, the valiant priest of Dolores, with his raggamuffin patriots,—(I don't mean any reflection, being a patriot myself, though no fighter; but Hidalgo had a horrid crew about him!) Where was I? Oh, ay,—Hidalgo came to knock the city about our ears; and Cristobal, being seized with a fit of blood-thirstiness, joins me the gang. They say, he came with an old sabre of flint—I don't know the name; it belonged to some king in the family. Then Calleja, whom they made viceroy—the devil confound him! (He cut my uncle's throat, with some fourteen thousand others, at Guanaxuato, one day, to save powder.)—Calleja chased Hidalgo to Aculco, and, there, he beat him. Cristobal's brother (he had a brother, a very fine young fellow, a patriot major;) was killed at Cristobal's side; Cristobal was knocked on the head,—somebody said, with his own royal weapon:—I don't know,—where's the difference? They broke his skull, and took him prisoner. Y pues? what then? Being a notorious crazy man, and very savagely mauled, they did not hang him. Ever since, he has been madder than ever. He writes histories, and, to save them from viceroys, (he takes all our presidents for viceroys: to my mind, they are; but that's nothing. You know Bustamente? a mighty great man: Santa Anna will beat him—but don't say so!) Well, to save his books from the president-viceroys, or viceroy-presidents, Cristobal offers them to every body he meets, with a petition to take them over the seas and publish them.—That's all!—The Indians at the hacienda love him, and take care of him.—Ha, ha! he caught you, did he? What did he say?"
"He gave me his books," said the traveller.
"Fuego! you took them? Ha, ha! now will the poor padre die happy!"
"I will return them to his relations."