CHAPTER X.

PIGS, VULGAR AND ARISTOCRATIC.--THE GIPSY CAPTAIN BEWITCHES US.--WE GO DOWN TO THE POTTER’S HOUSE.--A FAMILY DANCE.--AN AWFUL DISCOVERY.--A BOOKSELLER OF TARSHISH.

I heard two horrid stories at Granada, which I would not repeat except that I feel some of their truth. We were walking in the town one day, and observing an unusual air of stir and excitement, asked a stander-by what it meant.

The person in question told us that a certain Señor, Don So-and-so, had just died, and that as he was a great enemy to the Liberal party, and a great tyrant, there was rejoicing among the people. We were interested in the matter, and talked of it afterwards to an old _Granadino_, whose acquaintance we had made during our stay, and he more than confirmed the report.

“He was a bad man,” he said, “but of the _sangre azul_ (blue blood), a thorough aristocrat, and very powerful. I could tell you stories of what he did that you would not believe. Oh! the people who have blue blood in their veins can do anything in Spain, I assure you. It is a _cosa de España_. Now just listen to a thing this Señor Don L---- did not more than nine years ago. A poor honest man known to me, was taken up accused of committing a theft. He belonged to the Liberal party, and was hated by the blue blood. Well, this man, who is just dead, had him brought into the Plaza de Toos, and tied him up to one of the posts by the hands. ‘Did you or did you not commit this theft?’ he asked. ‘Señor, I know nothing of it. I am as innocent as a child,’” Then this Señor Don ---- ordered his man to hammer on to the prisoner’s hands with an iron hammer.

“‘Did you or did you not commit this theft?’ he was asked again by the great gentleman of the blue blood. ‘Señor, I have said I am innocent.’ Again the hammer fell on the poor man’s hands, and again and again, till the bones were broken, and he still denying the deed. At last, finding him so obstinate, they let him go back to prison, where he was kept for weeks. When he came out I saw with my own eyes the ruin they had made of his poor hands.”

“But that is as bad as the Inquisition,” I said, horrified.

The old man, with a good deal of Spanish punctiliousness, had a touch of Moorish resignation, or what might better be called perhaps fatalism. “We have had to bear such things. I can tell you what happened to me in my youth, when there was still more difference between the law for the blue blood and the white.[13] I am of the white of course, no Don or Caballero, but a humble Señor, of little account. I was a dealer in pigs, Señoras; and I sold a fine lot of pigs to a certain aristocratic gentleman whom I will call Don Serafin. Don Serafin agreed to buy my pigs for five hundred dollars, paying half the sum down, and giving me a written document engaging to pay the other at the end of three months. My beautiful pigs went, and the three months passed. No money from Don Serafin. As I did not wish to appear impertinent, (being of the white blood, therefore, nobody, you know, Señoras) I waited patiently till three months more had slipped away. Then I waited on Don Serafin, and respectfully demanded my money. ‘I owe him money!’ cried the great man to his servants, ‘turn the impertinent fellow away, _Es un mentira_. He lies.’

“I saw that nothing remained for me but to sue him for my money, which I