While I reclined luxuriously, sucking my grapes, the two ladies sat on each side of me, ostensibly fanning themselves, but only, I think, trying to make the air cooler for me. Very cool and pleasant they made it, certainly, but the gentle attentions of Dolores were at the same time such as might well create a subtler kind of fever in a man's veins—a malady not to be cured by fruit, fans, or phlebotomy.
“Who would not suffer blows for such compensation as this!” I said.
“Do not say such a thing!” exclaimed the señorita, with wonderful animation. “Have you not rendered a great service to our dear General—to our beloved country! If we had it in our power to give you everything your heart might desire it would be nothing, nothing. We must be your debtors for ever.”
I smiled at her extravagant words, but they were very sweet to hear, none the less.
“Your ardent love of your country is a beautiful sentiment,” I remarked somewhat indiscreetly, “but is General Santa Coloma so necessary to its welfare?”
She looked offended and did not reply. “You are a stranger in our country, señor, and do not quite understand these things,” said the mother gently. “Dolores must not forget that. You know nothing of the cruel wars we have seen and how our enemies have conquered only by bringing in the foreigner to their aid. Ah, señor, the bloodshed, the proscriptions, the infamies which they have brought on this land! But there is one man they have never yet succeeded in crushing: always from boyhood he has been foremost in the fight, defying their bullets, and not to be corrupted by their Brazilian gold. Is it strange that he is so much to us, who have lost all our relations, and have suffered many persecutions, being deprived almost of the means of subsistence that hirelings and traitors might be enriched with our property? To us in this house he is even more than to others. He was my husband's friend and companion in arms. He has done us a thousand favours, and if he ever succeeds in overthrowing this infamous government he will restore to us all the property we have lost. But ai de mi, I cannot see deliverance yet.”
“Mamita, do not say such a thing!” exclaimed her daughter. “Do you begin to despair now when there is most reason to hope?”
“Child, what can he do with this handful of ill-armed men?” returned the mother sadly. “He has bravely raised the standard, but the people do not flock to it. Ah, when this revolt is crushed, like so many others, we poor women will only have to lament for more friends slain and fresh persecutions.” And here she covered her eyes with her handkerchief.
Dolores tossed her head back and made a sudden gesture of impatience.
“Do you, then, expect to see a great army formed before the ink is dry on the General's proclamation? When Santa Coloma was a fugitive without a follower you hoped; now when he is with us, and actually preparing for a march on the capital, you begin to lose heart—I cannot understand it!”