“That’s enough, my friend,” said Don Roque, losing patience. “We are charmed with your conversation; but if you can take us this instant to the house of my friend, or direct us so that we can find it, we will go along.”
“In a minute, gentlemen. Don’t hurry,” replied Sursum Corda, starting off in advance with all the agility of which his crutches were capable. “Let us go there. Let us go, with all my heart. Do you see this house? Well, here lives Antonio Laste, first sergeant of the Fourth Company of Regulars, and you must know he saved from the treasury sixteen thousand, four hundred pesos, and took from the French the candles that they stole from the church.”
“Go on ahead, go on, friend,” I said, seeing that this indefatigable talker intended stopping to give all the details of the heroism of Antonio Laste.
“We shall arrive soon,” replied Sursum; “on the morning of the first of July I was going past here, when I encountered Hilario Lafuente, first corporal of fusileers of the Parish of Sas, and he said to me, ‘Today they are going to attack the Portillo;’ then I went to see what there was to see and—”
“We know all about this, already,” said Don Roque. “Let us go on fast. We can talk afterwards.”
“This house which you see here burned down and in ruins,” continued the cripple, going around a corner, “is the one that burned on the fourth, when Don Francisco Ipas, sublieutenant of the Second Company of fusileers of the parish of San Pablo, stood here with a cannon, and these—”
“We know the rest, my good man,” said Don Roque. “Forward, march! and the faster the better.”
“But much better was what Codé did, the farmer of the parish of La Magdalena, with the cannon of the Calle de la Parra,” persisted the