MONTI THE MATADOR.
(Originally intended for the F-rtn-ghtly R-v-w.)
"Yes, I'm better, and the Doctor tells me I've escaped once more. That Doctor hates you—I know it. He has saved me—to tell you the story—The story I have been trying to tell to some one for thirty years."
I was talking to Old MONTI, whose full name was MONTI DI PIETA—as a pledge of his respectability. He was a descendant of the Pornbrocheros del Treballos d'Oro. He was subsequently called Monkey—as a tribute to his character.
"I should like you to tell me," I said, "for you must know that for years I have seen the snows on the Lagartigo, and the moonlight on the—"
"Stop!" he cried—"you are going to begin padding. That will do for a magazine, not for me!" and he snapped his fingers at me.
But I was not to be put off. He was weak—a cripple—and I gave him the choice of listening to a personally-conducted tour in the South of Spain, or relating his adventures.
"I will have my revenge!" he muttered. "You shall hear my life from the beginning. You must know, then, that sixty years ago I was born, and—"
"Yes," I returned, interrupting him—"of poor parents. Your father was coarse, your mother pious. You learned all you could about bulls, which you kept from your father, and you were ultimately engaged as a bull-fighter—"
"Stop, stop!" he cried. "If you cut out about a dozen pages of my biography, at least let me explain how I saved my father. You must know—"