“The moon is a quiet wife, but you chatter like a paroquet.”
“And am I not able to be quiet also, monk? Look, I will be quiet as the moon—not a word, not a breath.” Then she threw herself back on the poncho, feigning sleep, her arms above her head, her hair scattered everywhere, only a tress or two half shading her flushed face and round, heaving bosom that would not be quiet. There was just a little mocking smile on her lips, just a little gleam of laughing eyes under her drooping lashes, for she could not help watching my face for admiration. In such an attitude the tempting little witch might have made the tepid blood of an ascetic boil.
Two or three hours thus flew swiftly by while I listened to her lively prattle, which, like the lark's singing, had scarcely a pause in it, her attempt at being still and moonlight having ended in a perfect fiasco. At length, pouting her pretty lips and complaining of her hard lot, she said it was time to go back to her prison; but all the time I was engaged in forcing back the bolt into its place she chattered without ceasing. “Adieu, Sun, husband of the moon,” she said. “Adieu, sweet, sweet friend, buyer of side-saddles! They were all lies you told—I know, I know. You want a horse and sidesaddle to carry off some girl to-night. Happy she! Now I must sit in the dark alone, alone, alone, till Antonio, the atrocious, comes to liberate me with his iron key—ah, fool!”
Before I had been long back under my tree, Antonio appeared, bringing the side-saddle in triumph on his horse before him. After going in to release his wife he came out and invited me to take maté. I then mentioned my wish to buy a good horse; he was only too willing to sell, and in a few minutes his horses were driven up for inspection. The black piebald was first offered, a very handsome, quiet-looking animal, apparently quite sound. The cream-nose, I noticed, was a bony, long-bodied brute, with sleepy eyes and a ewe neck. Could it be that the little double-dealing witch had intended to deceive me? But in a moment I dismissed such a suspicion with the scorn it merited. Let a woman be as false as she can, and able to fool her husband to the top of her bent, she is, compared with the man who wishes to sell you a horse, openness and truth itself. I examined the piebald critically, walking and trotting him round; looked into his mouth, then at hoofs and fetlocks, beloved of windgalls; gazed with fixed attention into his eyes and dealt him a sudden brisk blow on the shoulder.
“No weak spot will you find, señor,” said Antonio the mendacious, who was certainly the greatest of the three sinners met together in that place. “He is my best horse, only four years old, gentle as a lamb, sound as a bell. Sure-footed, señor, like no other horse; and with such an easy pace you can ride him at a gallop with a tumbler of water in your hand and not spill a drop. I will give him away to you for ten dollars, because you have been generous about the side-saddle, and I am anxious to serve you well.”
“Thank you, my friend,” I said. “Your piebald is fifteen years old, lame in the shoulders, broken in his wind, and has more vices than any seven horses in the Banda Orientál. I would not allow my wife to ride such a dangerous brute, for, as I told you, I have not been long married.”
Antonio framed his face to express astonishment and virtue indignant; then with the point of his knife he scratched the figure of a cross on the ground, and was about to swear solemnly on it that I was egregiously mistaken, that his beast was a kind of equine angel, ora Pegasus, at least, when I interfered to stop him. “Tell as many lies as you like,” I said, “and I will listen to them with the greatest interest; but do not swear on the figure of the cross to what is false, for then the four or five or six dollars profit you have made on the side-saddle will scarcely be sufficient to buy you absolution for such a sin.”
He shrugged his shoulders and restored the sacrilegious knife to its sheath. “There are my horses,” he said in an injured tone. “They are a kind of animal you seem to know a great deal about; select one and deceive yourself. I have endeavoured to serve you; but there are some people who do not know a friend when they see one.”
I then minutely examined all the other horses, and finally finished the farce by leading out the roan cream-nose, and was pleased to notice the crestfallen expression of my good shepherd.
“Your horses do not suit me,” I said, “so I cannot buy one. I will, however, purchase this old cow; for it is the only animal here I could trust my wife on. You can have seven dollars for it—not one copper more, for, like the Emperor of China, I speak once only.”