The Three-Cornered Hat

by Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

  The Corregidor did not answer. He had turned a livid, bluish colour. His eyes turned up, and a fit of feverish trembling shook him all over. Then his teeth began chattering and he fell to the ground, seized with a frightful convulsion. The shock of the millstream, the drenched clothes, the violent scene in the bedroom, his terror of the blunderbuss which Frasquita was pointing at him, had drained away his last strength.

  “I’m dying!” he muttered hoarsely. “Call Weasel!… Call Weasel! He’s close by – in the ravine. I mustn’t die… not in this house!” He stopped, exhausted, his eyes closed, and he lay like one dead.

  “And he will die, too!” Frasquita suddenly realized. “Lord! This is as bad as can be! What shall I do with this man in my house? What would people say if he died here? What would Lucas say? What excuse could I make as I opened the door to him myself? No! I can’t stay here with him. I must find my husband! What if I give people something to talk about? That’s better than losing my good name!”

  Her mind made up, she dropped the blunderbuss, went out into the yard, took out the remaining ass, saddled it somehow or other, opened the great gate of the yard, mounted in one leap for all her largeness of body, and rode off by the ravine.

  “Weasel! Weasel!” she called as she came near it.

  “Here I am!” At last the Alguacil answered, showing himself from behind a hedge. “Is that Señora Frasquita?”

  “Yes, it is. Go to the mill and look after your master – he’s dying!”

  “What’s that you say? A likely tale!”

  “I’m speaking the truth, Weasel!”

  “And you, by the saints! Where are you off to at this hour?”

  “I?… Hands off, rascal! I’m off to the city for a doctor.” With this Frasquita urged on the ass with a dig of her heel and aimed a passing kick at Weasel. She did not take the road to the city, as she had said, but made towards the neighbouring village.

  Weasel took no stock of this circumstance. He strode back with long strides to the mill, and as he went muttered to himself: “Go for a doctor, eh? The wretched woman might well do that!… What an unlucky man he is, though! A fine time to fall ill! Heaven gives him a titbit and he can’t get his teeth into it!”

  22

  Weasel Plays Many Parts

  When weasel reached the mill the Corregidor was beginning to come round and had managed to lift himself up from the ground. On the floor beside him stood the lit candle which he had brought down from the bedroom.

  “Has she gone?” was the Corregidor’s first sentence.

  “Who?”

  “That she-devil! I mean… the Miller’s wife…”

  “Yes, my Lord, she’s gone, and I don’t think she’s in a very good humour.”

  “Oh dear, Weasel! I’m dying!…”

  “Eh? What’s that your Lordship’s saying? By all that’s living!”

  “I fell into the millstream and caught a chill. My bones and flesh are parting with the cold!”

  “Well, indeed! So that’s all we get out of this!”

  “Weasel! Mind your tongue!”

  “I’m not saying a word, sir.”

  “That’s as well. Get me out of this fix.”

  “I will – right away! Your Lordship shall see – I’ll put things right in no time!”

  So saying, he snatched up the light with one hand and thrust the other under the Corregidor’s arm, helping him up to the bedroom. There he stripped off all his master’s clothes, put him to bed, ran out of the mill to the pit where the grapes were pressed, gathered an armful of faggots, returned to the kitchen, made a huge fire, brought all his master’s clothes downstairs, arranged them on the backs of two or three chairs, lit the oil lamp, hung it up on the kitchen rack, and finally climbed back upstairs to the bedroom.

  “How do we feel now?” he asked the Corregidor, holding the candle high so as to see his master’s face the better.

  “Oh, wonderful!” The Corregidor scowled. “I feel a perspiration coming on. Tomorrow I’ll have you hanged, Weasel!”

  “What for, my Lord?”

  “You dare ask? If only I’d known that by following out your precious plan I’d end up all by myself in this bed – yes, and get a second holy baptism into the bargain! I’m hanging you in the morning for sure!”

  “Will your Lordship tell me one thing? Did Señora Frasquita?—”

  “Señora Frasquita would have murdered me. That’s all I’ve gained by your advice! I tell you, you’re hanging in the morning – first thing!”

  “Hardly, my Lord Corregidor,” said the Alguacil.

  “Why do you say that, you insolent rogue? Because you see me laid on my back?”

  “No, my Lord. I mean that Señora Frasquita can’t be as bad as your Lordship says. She’s gone to the city to fetch a doctor.”

  “God in heaven! Are you sure she’s gone to the city?” cried the Corregidor, more dismayed than ever.

  “Well, that’s what she told me.”

  “Then run, Weasel, run! Ah! I’m ruined beyond cure! Do you know why Señora Frasquita’s gone to the city? To tell everything to my wife! To tell her I’m here! Heavens! Heavens! How was I to foresee this? I thought she had gone to the village to fetch her husband and, as I had him there under good guard, what did I care about her going there? But to go to the city! Run, Weasel, run! You’re fast on your feet. Run and prevent my utter ruin! Stop that dreadful woman entering my house!”

  “And you won’t hang me if I do?” the Alguacil asked with a touch of irony.

  “Of course not! I’ll make you a present of some good wearable shoes that don’t fit me. You shall have anything you wish.”

  “Then I’m off like a bird! Have a good sleep, my Lord. Inside half-an-hour I’ll be back here, leaving that woman behind me in jail. Not for nothing am I swifter on the road than any pack animal!” And Weasel hurried downstairs.

  It was, of course, while the Alguacil was away on this errand that Lucas was in the mill and saw certain sights through the keyhole.

  We now leave the Corregidor sweating in a strange bed and Weasel running towards the city (where Tio Lucas was to follow him so soon after in three-cornered hat and crimson cape) and just as speedily make for the village after the valiant Frasquita.

  23

  Again the Open Country and Those Voices!

  The one notable occurrence during Frasquita’s trip from the mill to the village was her sudden alarm at sighting a shadowy figure striking a tinder box in the middle of a ploughed field.

  “What if it’s one of the Corregidor’s bailiffs? What if he stops me?” thought Frasquita.

  At that moment a sound of braying was heard from the same direction. “Asses out at this hour!” she muttered. “And yet there’s no farmstead or smallholding hereabouts! Good life! but the goblins are out and about tonight and no mistake! It couldn’t be, I suppose, my little Lucas’s ass? No! Whatever would Lucas be doing in the middle of the night, dismounted, and right off the road? No doubt it’s someone on the look-out!” Her own ass chose that moment to bray an answer to the first ass. “Quiet, you devil!” Frasquita hissed, and jabbed the pin of her ochavo coin brooch right in the animal’s withers. Then, for fear of some unwelcome encounter, she rode the beast off the highway and began trotting it across the ploughed fields. Without further incident she reached the outskirts of the village. It was then about eleven o’clock.

  24

  A King of the Old School

  When tonuelo, after a discreet knock, entered the mayoral bedroom he found his Worship deep in a drunken sleep back-to-back with his wife, the two thus forming, as the immortal Quevedo observes somewhere, the figure of the two-headed eagle of Austria. At once he informed his master that Señora Frasquita – “her from the mill” – wished to speak to him.

  We need not record all the grunts and oaths that accompanied our home
spun Alcalde’s waking up and struggling into his clothes. We pass to the moment when Frasquita saw him come in stretching himself and flexing his muscles like a gymnast and heard him say through a protracted yawn: “A good day to you, Señora Frasquita! What brings you to this part of the world? Didn’t Tonuelo tell you to stay at the mill? Is this your idea of obeying the law?”

  “I’ve got to see my Lucas!” insisted Frasquita. “I must see him at once! Let him know that his wife is here!”

  “‘Got to!’ ‘Got to!’ You forget that you are talking to the King!”

  “Don’t speak to me of Kings, Master Juan, I haven’t come here to listen to nonsense! You know very well what I’ve been through! You know very well why you locked up my husband!”

  “I know nothing of the sort, Señora Frasquita. And your husband – he’s not locked up but peacefully asleep in this house where he’s been treated as I always treat respectable people. Tonuelo! Tonuelo! Go to the barn and tell Tio Lucas to get up and come here quickly! Come now, Señora, tell me what the matter is! Were you afraid of spending the night alone?”

  “Don’t be so brazen, Master Juan. I’m not partial to your little speeches either in joke or otherwise, as you well know. As to what the matter is, that’s plain enough surely! You and my Lord Corregidor wanted to ruin me, but you have failed utterly! Here am I with no reason at all to blush or hang my head, while the Corregidor is back there in the mill at death’s door!”

  “At death’s door? The Corregidor?” The Alcalde’s voice almost broke. “Lady! Do you realize what you are saying?”

  “I fully realize! He fell into the millstream and nearly drowned, and now he’s caught a chill on the lungs or something. That’s for her Ladyship his wife to worry about! I come to fetch my husband. Then the pair of us can set off tomorrow for Madrid! There I shall tell the King!…”

  “The Devil! Damnation!” muttered Master Juan Lopez. “Manuela! Come here, wench! Go and saddle the little mule. Señora Frasquita, I’m off to the mill! Heaven help you if you’ve done any harm to my Lord Corregidor!”

  “Master Alcalde! Master Alcalde!” Tonuelo ran in with a face white as death. “Tio Lucas isn’t in the barn! I can’t see his ass in the manger either! And somebody’s left the yard gate open! It looks as if the bird has flown!”

  “What d’you say?” shouted Master Juan Lopez.

  “Blessed Virgin! What will happen at the mill? Let’s be on our way, Master Alcalde! Lose no time! My husband will kill the Corregidor if he finds him there!”

  “You think Tio Lucas is at the mill?”

  “Where else? What’s more, on my way here I passed him without knowing. It was he, no doubt, that struck the tinder-box in the middle of the ploughed field. Great heavens! To think that brute beasts should have more sense than human beings! Would you believe it, Master Juan? – our two asses recognized and signalled to each other whereas Lucas and I did neither. Instead we thought each other scouts for the Corregidor and ran!”

  “Your Lucas is in a pretty mess!” said the Alcalde. “Come, let’s be on our way, and then we’ll see how we shall deal with the pair of you! I’m not the sort to be trifled with! I am the King! Not, I mean, a king like the one we have now in Madrid – that’s to say, in the Prado – but like that one in Seville once called Pedro the Cruel. Manuela! Here, Manuela, fetch me my stick and tell your mistress I am going out.”

  The maid did as she was told. She was, by the way, too good a girl for the Alcalde’s lady and, in perhaps another sense, for the Alcalde too. Master Lopez’s ass by now being saddled, Frasquita and he set out for the mill, followed by the trusty Tonuelo.

  25

  The Weasel’s Star

  Meanwhile weasel had returned to the mill after having searched for Frasquita in all the streets of the city.

  The astute Alguacil had paid a passing call at the Town Hall where he found everything quiet. The great doors stood open as at noonday, as they always did when authority had gone out in the discharge of its sacred duties. On the stairway landing and in the anteroom some other Alguacils awaiting their master’s return were uneasily dozing. At the sound of Weasel’s entrance they roused themselves and asked him, as the master’s deputy: “Is his Lordship here?”

  “Of course not! Be quiet, all of you! I’m here to learn if anything has happened.”

  “Nothing whatever.”

  “What about her Ladyship?”

  “She’s shut herself up in her apartments.”

  “Didn’t a woman come in just now?”

  “Nobody has been here all night…”

  “Well, let nobody in, whoever he be and whatever he say! Not for any reason! No matter who comes asking for my Lord or my Lady – seize him and put him in jail!”

  “They must be after some very big birds tonight!” one of the bailiffs remarked as though to nobody in particular.

  “Quite a hunt!” put in another.

  “With a capital H!” Weasel replied gravely. “You can guess how important it is since my Lord Corregidor and I act as beaters ourselves! So long, then! and good hunting! Keep your eyes peeled.”

  “God go with you, Master Bastian!” they all cried, bobbing and bowing to the Weasel.

  “My star is in eclipse!” he muttered to himself when he was outside the Town Hall again. “Even women fool me now! The Miller’s wife was on her way to the village to fetch her husband – not off to the city! Poor Weasel! What’s become of your powers of scent?”

  He was right to mourn his declining powers of scent, for he quite failed to get wind of a man who that very moment darted into hiding behind a clump of willows near the ravine, muttering to himself inside his greatcoat – or rather scarlet cape: “Look out, man! Here’s Weasel! He mustn’t see you at any price!”

  It was Tio Lucas on his way to the city. He had on the Corregidor’s clothes and every now and then kept saying to himself with malicious gusto: “Yes, indeed! The Corregidor’s lady too could tempt a man!”

  Weasel went by without seeing him and the sham Corregidor came out of his hiding-place and went on his way. Some time later he entered the city. A few minutes afterwards the Alguacil arrived at the mill, as the reader already knows.

  26

  Reaction

  The corregidor still lay in bed in the attitude in which Tio Lucas had seen him through the keyhole.

  “How I’ve sweated, Weasel!” he said as soon as the Alguacil was back in the room. “What of Señora Frasquita? Did you find her? Is she with you? Did she speak to her Ladyship?”

  “The Miller’s wife tricked me,” Weasel answered in a sad voice. “Tricked me like a simpleton. She didn’t go to the city but to the village – looking for her husband. Forgive my stupidity, my Lord…”

  “But that’s better! Better than anything!” said the Corregidor, and his eyes glinted wickedly. “That puts everything right! Before the daylight comes again Tio Lucas and Señora Frasquita will be on their way to the Inquisition’s prison, bound back to back, and there they’ll rot with never a soul to tell tonight’s adventure to! Bring me my clothes, Weasel. They must be dry by now. Bring them and help me dress! The lover is about to turn into the Corregidor!…”

  Weasel went down to the kitchen to fetch the clothes.

  27

  In the King’s Name!

  Meanwhile señora frasquita, Master Juan Lopez, and Tonuelo were nearing the mill, which they reached a few minutes later.

  “I’ll go in first!” our rustic Alcalde announced. “I’ll show them who represents law and order here! Follow me, Tonuelo! You, Señora Frasquita, stay here at the door till I call you.” Then he marched in under the grapevine to where a band of moonlight showed up a man – a hunchback, it seemed – in the familiar garb of the Miller – grey cloth waistcoat and breeches, black sash, blue stockings, Murcian velour cap, with a countryman’s capote thrown over one shoulder.

>   “It’s he!” shouted the Alcalde. “Give yourself up, Tio Lucas!”

  Velour Cap made to dart back into the mill.

  “Ah, would you!” It was Tonuelo now. He leapt upon the man, seized him round the neck and, driving a knee into the small of his back, sent him rolling on the ground. At that moment a wild being of quite another sort leapt upon Tonuelo and, hauling him by his belt, dragged him down on the stone flags and began slapping and pummelling him vigorously. This was Frasquita. She kept shouting: “Ruffian! Let go my Lucas!”

  Just then another figure appeared, leading in an ass from somewhere on the right. He shoved resolutely between the two strugglers, intent on rescuing Tonuelo. It was Weasel. He had taken the village Alguacil for his master in the darkness. “Lady! Treat my master with respect!” he said, and with a shove from his shoulders he pushed her down on top of Tonuelo. Madam, finding herself, as it were, between two fires, at once let drive at Weasel a tremendous thrust in the pit of the stomach and fairly bowled him over, for all his lanky height. And with him a whole quartet of bodies was now rolling on the ground.

  Meanwhile Master Juan Lopez was exerting himself to prevent the supposed Tio Lucas from getting to his feet. He had one foot firmly planted in the other’s ribs.

  “Weasel! Help! Help! In the King’s name! I am the Corregidor!” yelled Don Eugenio at last, feeling the Alcalde’s hoof shod in a bullhide sandal pressing on him heavily.

  “The Corregidor! Bless me! So it is!” gasped Master Juan Lopez in utter amazement.

  “The Corregidor!” they all echoed. At the same time four sprawling figures scrambled to their feet.

  “I’ll put you all in irons!” screamed Don Eugenio. “I’ll send you all to the gallows!”

  “B-but, my Lord…” began Master Juan Lopez, falling on his knees. “P-pardon me, your Excellency, for ill-treating you. How was I to recognize your Lordship in such common dress?”