“Praised be God! You are welcome! My dear friend. We all thought you were dead, and I myself have said many a pater and ave (not that I regret them!) for your soul. Then you weren’t murdered, after all? That you were robbed, we know!”
“What do you mean?” I asked, rather astonished.
“Oh, you know! That splendid repeater you used to strike in the library whenever we said it was time for us to go into church. Well, it has been found, and you’ll get it back.”
“Why,” I broke in, rather put out of countenance, “I lost it—”
“The rascal’s under lock and key, and as he was known to be a man who would shoot any Christian for the sake of a peseta, we were most dreadfully afraid he had killed you. I’ll go with you to the Corregidor, and he’ll give you back your fine watch. And after that, you won’t dare to say the law doesn’t do its work properly in Spain.”
“I assure you,” said I, “I’d far rather lose my watch than have to give evidence in court to hang a poor unlucky devil, and especially because—because——”
“Oh, you needn’t be alarmed! He’s thoroughly done for; they might hang him twice over. But when I say hang, I say wrong. Your thief is an Hidalgo. So he’s to be garrotted the day after to-morrow, without fail.* So you see one theft more or less won’t affect his position. Would to God he had done nothing but steal! But he has committed several murders, one more hideous than the other.”
* In 1830, the noble class still enjoyed this privilege.
Nowadays, under the constitutional regime, commoners have
attained the same dignity.