them, my dear one,” said Cipriano. “Go forward, you can walk over broken snakes such as those.”
As they went on foot past the post-office square, where the modern scribes at little tables under the arches sat tapping out letters on their typewriters for the poor and illiterate, who waited with their few centavos to have their messages turned into florid Castilian, Ramón and Cipriano met with an almost startled respect.
“Why talk to the Bishop?—he doesn’t exist any more. I hear his Knights of Cortes had a big dinner the other evening, and it is said—I don’t believe it—that they drank oaths in blood to have my life and yours. But I think the oaths of the Catholic Dames would frighten me more. Why, if a man stops to unfasten his trousers to make water, the Knights of Cortes run for their lives, thinking the pistol is pointed at them. Don’t think about them, man! Don’t try to conciliate them. They will only puff up and become insolent, thinking you are afraid of them. Six soldiers will trample down all that dirt,” said the General.
It was the city, and the spirit of the city.
Cipriano had a suite in the big Palace on the Plaza de Armas.
“If I marry,” he said, as they passed into the stone patio, where soldiers stood at attention, “I shall take a house in the colony, to be more private.”
Cipriano in town was amusing. He seemed to exude pride and arrogant authority as he walked about. But his black eyes, glancing above his fine nose and that little goat beard, were not to be laughed at. They seemed to get everything, in the stab of a glance. A demoniacal little fellow.