When he grew tired of admiring that beautiful beast, he went on, and to have something to do, watched an old farmer's wife haggling over a donkey.
The first gipsy had gone back to his horse again, and was gazing at him from afar, and shaking the halter-rope as though he were calling him. Batiste slowly drew near him, pretending absent-mindedness, looking at the bridges over which passed the parasols of the women of the city, like many-coloured movable cupolas.
It was now noon. The sand of the river-bed grew hot; not the slightest breath of wind passed over the space between the railings. In that hot and sticky atmosphere, the sun beat down vertically penetrating the skin and burning the lips.
The gipsy advanced a few steps toward Batiste, offering him the end of the rope, as a kind of taking of possession.
"Neither your offer nor mine. Thirty, and God knows I get no profit on it. Thirty ... don't say no, or you'll make me wild. Come, put it there!"
Batiste took the rope and offered his hand to the vender who pressed it with much feeling. The bargain was concluded.
The former began to take from his sash all that plethora of savings which swelled out his stomach like an undigested meal: a bank-note that the master had loaned him, a few silver dollars, a handful of small change wrapped up in a paper-cone. When the count was completed, he could not get out of going with the gipsy to the shed to invite him to take a drink, and giving a few pennies to Monote for all his trottings.
"You're carrying off the treasure of the market. It's a lucky day for you, Mist' Bautista: you crossed yourself with your right hand, and the Virgin came out to look at you."
And he had to drink a second glass, the gipsy's treat, but at last, cutting short his torrent of offers and flatteries, he seized the halter of his new horse and helped by the obliging Monote, mounted on the steed's bare back and left the noisy market at a trot.
He departed well satisfied with the animal; he had not lost his day. He scarcely remembered poor Morrut, and he felt the pride of ownership when on the bridge and on the road, some one from the huerta turned around to examine the white steed.