The Three-Cornered Hat

by Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

  “You like me well enough?”

  “Like you well enough? You’re a woman above all your sex.”

  “Look! – there’s nothing false about this.” And she rolled up the sleeve of her blouse and showed the Corregidor the rest of her arm, which could have been a caryatid’s and was whiter than a lily.

  “Like you well enough!” The Corregidor repeated with feeling. “Night and day at all hours and in all places my thoughts are only of you!”

  “So! You do not care then for your lady wife!” Frasquita’s pretence of sympathy for the noble lady was so forced it would have made a dying man laugh. “How sad! My Lucas told me he had had the happiness of speaking to her when he went to mend the clock in your bedchamber, and she was very beautiful and kind, with the sweetest disposition!”

  “An exaggeration!” muttered the Corregidor rather sourly.

  “On the other hand, others have told me,” Frasquita went on, “that she has a very bad temper and you fear her like the devil…”

  “Another exaggeration!” growled the Corregidor, the blood rushing to his face. “Both stories are exaggerations! The lady has her little whims, certainly, but it’s a far cry from that to making me afraid. I am the Corregidor!”

  “Yes; but do you love her, or do you not?”

  “Well, now… I love her a great deal, or rather used to love her before I knew you. But ever since I saw you I don’t know what has come into me. She too knows something’s amiss. It’s enough that now touching my wife’s face means no more to me than touching my own. D’you see? All my love and feeling for her has vanished. Whereas to touch your hand, your arm, your cheek, your waist, I’d give all I have and more!”

  As he spoke the Corregidor tried to grasp the bared arm which Frasquita paraded before his eyes. She, however, without the slightest loss of composure, stretched forwards and touched his Lordship’s chest with a hand as calmly firm and irresistible as an elephant’s trunk, and pushed him over backwards, chair and all.

  “Ave María Purísima!” she cried and laughed uncontrol­lably. “The chair must have been broken!”

  “What’s happening below there?” From over their heads Tio Lucas suddenly thrust his homely face between two clusters in the ceiling of the vine-trellis. The Corregidor meanwhile lay on the ground, staring up in strange alarm at the other man. At that moment he could have served as model for the Devil overthrown by – I won’t say St Michael but another creature from Hell.

  “What’s happening?” Frasquita quickly took up Lucas’s words. “Why, my Lord Corregidor tipped his chair too far back, overbalanced, and fell!”

  “Jesús, María y José!” exclaimed the Miller. “Has your Lordship hurt yourself? Would you like a little water and vinegar?”

  “There are no bones broken!” said the Corregidor, scrambling to his feet as best he could. And he added in a tone that Frasquita was able to hear, “You’ll pay for this!”

  “Your Lordship saved my life!” Tio Lucas said, not budging from his position on top of the trellis. “Just fancy, wife! I was sitting up here admiring the grapes when I dropped off to sleep on a network of vine shoots and sticks with gaps between as big as my body. So if his Lordship’s tumble hadn’t woken me in the nick of time I should have fallen and broken my head on those flags down there.”

  “Is that so, eh?” said the Corregidor. “Then, bless me, I’m glad of it. I declare I’m glad I took a tumble!… You’ll pay me for this!” The last sentence was in an undertone for Frasquita’s ear. It was given with a look of such concentrated fury that Frasquita felt uneasy. She could clearly see that the Corregidor had been apprehensive at first that the Miller had heard everything. But now, reassured that he had heard nothing – for the naturalness with which Lucas acted his part would have taken in the shrewdest eye – he was beginning to give a free run to his fury and think of ways of revenge.

  “Here! Come down from there and help me brush down his Lordship! He’s smothered in dust.”

  As Lucas climbed down she flicked at the Corregidor’s coat with her apron and whispered in his ear, “The poor man heard nothing. He was sleeping like a log.” Even more than her actual words, the fact that she spoke them in an undertone – an open assumption of collusion between them – had an almost magical effect upon him. “You sly thing! You naughty girl!” he babbled, his mouth watering, while he still outwardly assumed a grumbling tone.

  “Your Lordship won’t bear me any malice?” Frasquita pleaded.

  Severity appeared to be yielding such good results that the Corregidor made to give Frasquita a look of anger, but, meeting her disarming smile and the irresistible appeal of her divine eyes, he said in a small, tenderly caressing voice: “That rests with you, my love!”

  Then Tio Lucas dropped down from the trellis.

  12

  Tithes and First Fruits

  Once the corregidor was in his seat again, Frasquita shot a quick glance at her husband and saw him as self-possessed as ever, though secretly bursting with a desire to laugh at what was passing. She blew him a kiss the first time his Lordship’s eye was averted, then, in a siren voice that might have made Cleopatra jealous, said, “Now your Lordship must try my grapes.”

  What a picture she made, the lovely Frasquita then! Were I a Titian I should have painted her in just such a posture – poised in front of the utterly enthralled Corregidor, vivid, alluring, magnificent, her tall, splendid figure in its close-fitting dress, her bare arms arched above her head with a glowing bunch of grapes dangling from each hand. So standing, she turned on the old man a smile that, while utterly enchanting, was still a little pleading, a little fearful, and added: “They haven’t yet been tried by my Lord Bishop. They’re the first we’ve had this year…” Doubtless she would have reminded the learned Doctor of the tall figure of Pomona,* offering fruits to some rustic god or satyr.

  Just then, right at the end of the little flagged courtyard came into view the reverend Bishop of the diocese, with the learned Doctor himself and two elderly canons. The Bishop paused a moment to take in the scene before him, so comical and yet so charming; then, using the quiet, gentle tones of the typical prelate of his day, he said: “Fifthly, pay tithes and first fruits to the Church of God. Thus Christian doctrine teaches us. You, however, my Lord Corregidor, not content with administering the tithe, make it also your business to devour the first fruits.”

  “The Lord Bishop!” both the Miller and his wife cried and ran from the Corregidor’s side to kiss the prelate’s ring. “May God reward your Lordship for coming to honour this humble house!” said Tio Lucas, kissing the ring first, in a tone of the deepest reverence. “How fine and well my Lord Bishop looks!” cried Frasquita, kissing the ring after her husband. “God bless and keep him more years than he has kept my own Lucas!”

  “I can’t see what use I am here since you bestow blessings instead of asking them,” remarked the priest, smiling good-humouredly. Extending two fingers, he blessed first Frasquita, then the others standing around her.

  “Here, your Lordship, are the first fruits.” The Corregidor took a bunch from Frasquita’s hand and offered it cere­moniously to the Bishop. “I haven’t yet tasted the grapes,” he added with an ironical glance towards Frasquita.

  “But not because they are green like those in the fable,” observed our learned lawyer.

  “Those in the fable,” the Bishop gently corrected, “weren’t green, Master Licentiate, but out of the fox’s reach.”

  Neither had intended any allusion to the Corregidor, but the remarks of both fitted recent happenings so aptly that the Corregidor turned crimson with anger and remarked as he bent over the Bishop’s ring.

  “That’s as much as to call me a fox, reverend sir!”

  “Tu dixisti,” retorted the Bishop with the mild insistence of a true saint. “Excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta. Qualis vir talis oratio.* But satis
jam dictus. Nullus ultra sit sermo.* Or, what amounts to the same thing, let us give over Latin and take a look at these precious grapes.” And he plucked a single grape from the bunch which the Corregidor was holding out. ‘Indeed they’re very fine!’ he pronounced, holding the grape up against the light and then handing it behind to his Secretary. “A great pity they don’t agree with me.” The Secretary in his turn surveyed the grape critically, made a polite gesture of approval, and passed it on to one of the retinue who aped both the Bishop’s action and the Secretary’s gesture, even going so far as to take it up to his nostrils, and then… lay it in the basket with scrupulous care, remarking to the bystanders in a whisper, “His Lordship is fasting”. Tio Lucas, whose little eyes had closely followed every stage of the grape’s progress, at once plucked it out and devoured it unobserved.

  After this the whole company sat down, and talk went round – talk, for instance, of the weather that autumn – for it was persisting very dry in spite of the first October storm having come and gone; then there was some discussion of the prospect of a new war between Napoleon and Austria, and everyone was emphatic that the Emperor’s troops would never invade Spanish territory. The learned Doctor shook his head over the topsy-turvy and calamitous nature of the times, lamenting the peaceful days of his forbears, just as his forbears had lamented those of theirs. Five o’clock was screeched by the parrot, and at a sign from the reverend Bishop, the very smallest of the pages went off to the episcopal coach (which stood in the same ravine where Weasel sat waiting) and brought back a delicious seed cake powdered with salt scarcely an hour out of the oven. A little table was then set up in the midst of the company, and the cake was cut into four pieces of which Tio Lucas and Frasquita, after first modestly declining with great firmness, were persuaded to take a share. And a truly democratic equality reigned for a full half-hour underneath vine clusters tenderly coloured by the glow of the setting sun.

  13

  Said the Jackdaw to the Raven

  An hour and a half later all the distinguished picnickers were back in the city.

  My Lord Bishop and his household had arrived with due punctuality, thanks to the coach, and were already in the palace where we will leave them saying their devotions.

  The eminent lawyer, who was very learned, and the two canons, perfectly matched in corpulence and respectability, went on with the Governor as far as the town hall where his Excellency said he had work to do, and then made their way towards their respective houses. They found their way, like mariners, by the stars, and groped their way round corners like blind men, for night had already closed down on the city. The moon was not yet out, and all public lighting, like this present age’s own luminaries, existed only in the mind of the Creator.

  All the same it was common enough to meet at that time, proceeding through one or other of the city streets, a lantern or link with which the obsequious lackey lit his splendid lord or lady on their way to a nightly entertainment or a visit to some kinsfolk.

  Up against most of the low railings could be detected (more by the nose than the eye, if truth be told) certain dark shadowy silent forms. These were gallants who, hearing footsteps, had paused a moment in the conduct of their amours.

  The lawyer and the two canons were meanwhile passing the journey away with the following exchanges.

  “What macaronies we are! Whatever will they think at home when they see us come in at such an hour?”

  “What will passers-by in the street think meeting us at something past seven of night hugging the shadows like bandits?”

  “We must mend our ways.”

  “Indeed we must! But oh! that divine mill!”

  “My wife can’t abide the mention of it,” said the lawyer – in a tone which betrayed considerable apprehension of the approaching conjugal reunion.

  “And as for my niece,” put in one of the canons – he must certainly have belonged to a penitentiary order – “my niece says clerics shouldn’t pay calls on lady friends.”

  “And yet,” put in his companion who belonged to a preaching order, “all that goes on in the mill is as innocent as can be.”

  “Of course! Doesn’t my Lord Bishop go there himself?”

  “But then, gentlemen, at our age!” objected the penitentiary. “Yesterday I reached my five-and-seventieth year.”

  “Evidently!” replied the preacher. “But let’s talk of other things. How lovely Señora Frasquita was tonight!”

  “As to that, she was lovely enough, certainly,” said the lawyer with a show of disinterestedness.

  “Very lovely!” re-echoed the penitentiary from amid his wrappings.

  “If anyone doubt it,” added the preacher, “ask the Corregidor…”

  “The poor man is quite in love with her!”

  “You’re right!” exclaimed the confessor.

  “Most assuredly!” added the lawyer. “Well, gentlemen, I’m taking a short cut home from here. A very goodnight to you both!”

  “Goodnight,” answered the canons. They went on a few paces in silence.

  “He’s sweet on the miller’s lovely wife, too!” muttered the preacher, giving his brother, the penitentiary, a nudge.

  “So it would seem!” the other replied, stopping at the door of his house. “But what a churl he is! Well, till tomorrow, friend. I hope the grapes agree with you.”

  “Till tomorrow, if God will… May you have a good night.”

  “God give us both good nights!” said the penitentiary piously from his porch where could be seen a lamp and a figure of the Virgin.

  And he gave a rap with the knocker.

  Left alone in the street, the other canon, who was as broad as high and seemed to roll in his gait, passed on in the direction of his house. Before reaching it, however, he stepped aside to a wall, committing an act which years later was to come under a police ban as a misdemeanour. At the same time he muttered to himself, thinking no doubt of his colleague in the choir.

  “And you’re sweet on Señora Frasquita yourself!” adding a second later, “And, as lovely goes, she certainly is lovely!”

  14

  Advice from The Weasel

  Meanwhile the corregidor had climbed up the stairs of the town hall with Weasel in close attendance. With the latter he kept up for some time in the assembly room a conversation of a more familiar kind than was proper for one of his rank and quality.

  “My Lord, take the word of an old game dog who knows the hunt!” the rascally bailiff was saying. “Señora Frasquita is desperately in love with your Worship and all that your Worship has been telling me only makes it clearer to me, as clear as that lamp yonder…”

  He pointed to a brass lamp which lit up a bare eighth of the room.

  “I am not so sure, Weasel,” replied Don Eugenio, sighing forlornly.

  “But why not? But say that she weren’t now – let’s be quite frank. Your Worship – pardon me for saying so – has a bodily defect, is it not so?”

  “I have indeed!” agreed the Corregidor. “But that defect – why, Tio Lucas has it too. He has more of a stoop than I have!”

  “Much more! Very much more! There’s no comparison whatever! But on the other hand – and here is my point – Your Worship has a right well-favoured countenance… it could indeed be called a handsome countenance. Whereas Tio Lucas looks like Sergeant Utrera, fairly brimming over with ugliness.”

  The Corregidor smiled with pleased vanity.

  “And what’s more,” the Bailiff added, “Señora Frasquita would willingly throw herself out of a high window if she could thereby secure the appointment of her nephew…”

  “Ah, there I’m with you! That appointment is my only hope!”

  “Well, to business, sir! I have explained to your Worship my own plan. It rests only to put it into action this very night.”

  “I’ve told you many a time I don’t wan
t your advice!” Don Eugenio shouted, recollecting suddenly that he was talking with an inferior.

  “I thought you had asked for…” Weasel began stam­mering.

  “Don’t answer me back!”

  The Weasel bowed.

  “Well now, you were saying,” resumed Don Eugenio, calming down again, “that this very night I can settle this whole matter? Look you, man, that contents me very well. Why, the Devil! that would soon free me from this cruel uncertainty!”

  Weasel made no comment.

  The Corregidor went to the writing-table and wrote a few lines on a sheet of paper with a seal attached. He affixed his own seal mark and stowed the document in his pocket.

  “Now it’s done – her nephew’s appointment!” he an­nounced, taking a pinch of snuff. “Tomorrow I’ll settle with the Aldermen, and either they ratify it or there’ll be a massacre! Don’t you think that’s the way?”

  “That’s it! That’s it!” cried Weasel, full of enthusiasm, putting a lean paw in the Corregidor’s snuffbox and taking a pinch. “That’s the very thing! Your Worship’s predecessor likewise never let things stand in his way!”

  “Stop your prattling!” broke in the Corregidor, delivering a sharp flick on the other’s pilfering hand.

  “My predecessor was a dolt when he had you for his Alguacil. But let’s return to things of importance. You tell me Tio Lucas’s mill is situated in the limits of the adjoining district, and not of this town. Are you sure of that?”

  “Very sure! The jurisdiction of the City ends at the little ravine where I sat this evening waiting while your Excellency… I vow to Lucifer! If I had been in your Lordship’s shoes!…”

  “Enough!” growled Don Eugenio. “You are insolent!”

  Seeing a half-sheet of paper, he wrote a note, folded it, turned up a corner and handed it to Weasel. “Here,” he said as he did so, “is the letter you sought for the Alcalde of the district in question. You will explain verbally all he has to do. You observe that I follow your plan to the letter. Woe to you if you lead me into a cul-de-sac!”