The Spanish Prisoner

Once in a Blue Moon, When the Albany Post Road near Hetheringham is being repaired, the traveler is directed to a complex of dirt roads whereon he may get to Bunterton. On such occasions, Mr. Ciuccia sets a board on a pair of trestles by the wayside and puts on display whatever wizened or retarded fruits and vegetables he may have coaxed out of his obstinate little piece of land. So he makes tobacco money. He smokes Toscani cigars -- not because he enjoys them, but because their exhalations kill green fly, and he is proud of his flowers. "Dey likea me, I likea dem," he told me, reluctantly handing me a potted Easter lily to which I had taken a fancy.

I paid for it, and said, "You might give (continued on page 118) Spanish Prisoner (continued from page 64) me a bit of paper. The pot's all earthy."

He growled, "Paper! You wanna me I should put jam on it, maybe?" There was a gutted old ledger or manuscript book to hand. He ripped out a few pages and wrapped the flowerpot. "So long," he said.

I took the flower home -- it was to enhance my evening à deux -- unwrapped the pot, stood back, and said involuntarily, "What beautiful handwriting!"

"Whatever are you talking about?" my companion inquired.

It was the wrapping paper: fine, handmade stuff, unruled and covered with marvelously regular lines in a very fine longhand, written in black ink with a flexible sharp nib.

I saw, in the top right-hand corner of the uppermost sheet, Charles Ouimet. Journal. Paris, 1863-1865. p. 142. The other pages were headed similarly, with consecutive page numbers. Charles Ouimet, whoever he may have been, must have had an eye on posterity. Well, I thought, greater work than Ouimet's has ended in dirtier hands than Ciuccia's -- the manuscripts of Bach ended in a butcher's shop.

I read on. Ouimet wrote a stylized kind of French...

"What is it?" my young dinner guest asked.

I said, "It seems that somebody dined out with the great."

Ouimet had written:

"Monday. Mlle. T -- and I dined with Alexandre Dumas the Elder and the American actress Adah Isaacs Menken of New Orleans.

"Dumas, gorged with rich food, had the appearance of a sleepy hippopotamus, but his bloodshot eyes were shrewd and sly under his fleshy brows, like the eyes of a mischievous child pretending to hide under a pillow. His coat was too tight, somewhat the worse for neglect, and so marked with the brown tints of ancient sauces as to remind one of the palette of a painter trying colors for an autumnal landscape. Yet the beautiful American could not take her great black eyes off him. As we sipped our coffee, she asked him naively, 'Master, is it true that in The Count of Monte Cristo you took the idea of the escape of Edmond Dantes from the memoirs of the Baron von der Trenck?'

"Dumas answered, 'No, sweet lady, but what if I had? Would you, for example, ask the cook downstairs if the sublime omelets we ate tonight were merely modifications of the work of a chicken? No, dear lady, I'm sorry, I can't help it -- I'm a genius. I transcend and transmute the commonplace. The seed of Monte Cristo was blown into the fertile garden of my mind by a curious little tale. I let it germinate, here -- and here --.' He struck himself on forehead and breast; one of his waistcoat buttons flew off. 'For you, Divine Mazeppa, I'll tell the little story which was to become the germ of what the world wrongly regards as the greatest romantic novel of our age . . . Yes, wrongly, Monsieur Ouimet! The Three Muskeleers is the greatest. I rank Monte Cristo second, only. I know my limitations.'

"So, pausing occasionally to feed Adah Isaacs Menken a grape or an apricot, Alexandre Dumas drew into his immense chest a breath that seemed to exhaust the atmosphere of our little private dining room, and went on; dry, matter-of-fact, inexorable; covering the tablecloth with diagrams made of forks, fruit and decanters..."

• • •

...I met him about 30 years ago in Malaga, in early summer. I love Spain, but the Spaniards disappointed me somewhat; they are jealous as Moors and keep their women behind gratings. I refer, of course, to the Spanish gentleman. But even the shopkeeper -- even the mechanic, the fisherman, the muleteer, the barber, the cab driver, the humble artisan -- is devilishly quick with a knife if one so much as winks at his wife. I was never perfectly comfortable in Spain. It is the only country in Europe -- except Corsica, where the men are just as barbarous -- in which I sometimes found myself with time to kill.

In other words, I was bored. I loitered about the wharves, observing the sailors and the ships, and eating chirimoyas, that sweetest of fruit. They say that a dozen chirimoyas eaten daily for a fortnight will kill you. Then when my time comes, let me perish of a surfeit of chirimoyas, in the arms of a beautiful woman, to the music of Rossini! How so be it, one ship in particular caught my fancy -- a merchant vessel of antiquated pattern, but of distinctive elegance of line, smartly painted and decorated with a finely carved figurehead representing a glorious girl in bridal dress. The name of the ship was Mercedes. As I stood, admiring, a deep voice said, "My ship pleases you, señor?"

I turned and saw a gentleman who might have been Don Quixote himself, he was so tall and thin and long-limbed; only he was dressed all in rich black, relieved only by white cambric ruffles at wrist and throat, and was leaning on a long, gold-headed ebony stick. His hands, I noticed, were all tight sinew and drawn wire, conveying an impression of immense nervous strength, and although his manner was courteous his tone was peremptory, almost harsh.

I replied, as best I could, that I profoundly admired both vessel and figurehead -- that the latter, indeed, interested me most of all. He, grimly smiling -- possibly at my Spanish -- replied in heavily accented French, "Ah, yes, the figurehead is handsome, but not nearly as beautiful as its original, after whom the ship herself is named."

We introduced ourselves to each other, then, and I learned that this was the immensely wealthy merchant Juan Gutierrez. He continued, "If M. Dumas will do me the honor to join me in a simple little dinner at my house, such as it is, I shall be most proud to present you to the lady."

"I shall be enchanted, señor," said I.

"If you will grant me the privilege of sending my humble four-wheeler to your hotel at eight o'clock...?"

You might have thought that I was to be dragged off in a donkey cart to eat wormy chick-peas out of a wooden bowl in a sooty hovel. But I was conveyed in a high black-and-gold coach drawn by four peerless matched black horses to a magnificent house in a high-walled garden of exotic trees and brilliant flowers. The gates were of intricately wrought iron, guarded by a forbidding keeper and two frightful black dogs as big as lions and twice as shaggy.

I was received in a luxuriously appointed salon, adorned with rarities from all over the earth, but my attention was caught and held by a transcendentally magnificent portrait of a breath-taking beauty in the Spanish style. The frame alone must have been worth 100,000 francs! Seeing my awe-struck gaze, and hearing my gasp of rapture, Gutierrez said, "It is a good likeness. I do not know much about pictures, but the painter, one Goya, is well spoken of in high places, they tell me." I looked about me expectantly. "She will join us for coffee," he said.

Explaining that his lady was indisposed with a passing migraine, he took me into dinner. Courtesy compelled me to take a sip of wine, to his good health and long life. He said, gravely, "It is written in my djuk that I shall not die until snow falls in the heat of midsummer in the streets of Malaga."

"That will be never, then," I said. "But what is a djuk?"

"It is a gypsy word, meaning destiny."

So, in the course of a superlative dinner, a description of which -- since you have already dined -- might seem wearisome, the merchant of Malaga told me something of himself.

His family, driven by poverty, had come to the coast from the plains, where for generations they had been horsemen and cattlemen. At the age of 10, young Juan Gutierrez shipped as cabin boy aboard a merchantman. Quick to learn, clever with his hands, very tall for his age, and remarkably strong and agile, he was an able-bodied seaman at 16, and second mate before he was 19 years old. By this time he had seen much of the world and learned the lingua franca of the sea, which involves a little of every language. There was no situation, he flattered himself, to which he could not adapt himself. So we all think, until we fall in love.

He fell in love with Mercedes de Baeza, daughter of a prosperous ship's chandler of Malaga. She was only 16, but already regarded as one of the most beautiful girls in that city. And there was that about Juan Gutierrez which made her prefer him to any other man she had seen. Her look told him that. He went straight to her father and asked for her hand in marriage.

Old De Baeza laughed at him. "Do you think I am going to throw my Mercedes away on a mere second mate of a merchantman?" he asked.

"Next year I shall be first mate," said Juan.

"And after that?"

"In a couple of years, I shall have a command," said Juan.

The chandler said, "What then? In Malaga one cannot spit without hitting a sea captain. No, no, my boy! Come back with a ship of your own, and then we might talk."

Juan went away bitterly enough, but before he sailed he contrived to talk with Mercedes. "I shall wait for you," she said.

"When I return," said he, "it will be in a ship of my own."

Then he went down to the port. On the way he saw a crowd of children hissing and making the sign against the evil eye, and throwing fruit rinds at an old gypsy woman who was trying to rest in the shade of a wall. Juan, who was a kindhearted young fellow, and broadminded for a Spaniard, having learned in his travels that it takes all sorts to make a world, drove the children away. He gave the old woman a piece of money, saying, "Go with God."

She thanked him, and said, "For your courtesy, young gentleman, I will read you a djuk and give you a blessing, for gypsies can bless as well as curse, if they wish." Laughing, he held out his hand, but she put it aside, saying, "That is for fools. Let me read your eyes." Her gaze met his and held it so that he could not have looked away had he tried. "You shall have your heart's desire," she said.

"A ship of my own?" he asked.

"Twenty ships of your own and the girl you love."

He laughed; it was the old story. "And when shall I die?"

She said, "I shall send my Watcher to keep you from harm, but you must die when snow falls in the heat of midsummer in the streets of Malaga. That is written." With which absurdity, she hobbled away.

So Juan sailed for the East Indies, where his captain traded cheap guns and powder for valuable silks and spices. It was a prosperous voyage, but it brought our hero no nearer to his command, let alone the ownership of his own vessel, and his beloved Mercedes seemed never so far away. They came safely around the coast of Africa. It was when they were in the Mediterranean itself that they were struck by one of those unforeseeable, abrupt and frightful tempests, luckily rare in those waters. As if 50 batteries of artillery had been waiting in ambush behind the blue of the sky, there was a puff of black cloud, a glare of white fire, and all their masts were gone in one shattering blast! The ship was helpless in a mountainous sea, and at the mercy of all the 32 winds in collusion. She foundered. Juan lashed himself to a spar and, with an ardent prayer to Heaven, let the waves take him. He also cried, "Mercedes!" And, to be on the safe side, muttered, "Remember my djuk, gypsy." Then the waves beat the senses out of him.

He came to himself on a sandy beach and saw that he was surrounded by armed men in white robes, bearded to the eyes, and very villainous looking. They gave him water. He spoke to them in the lingua franca, thanking them. They grinned, and one of them said "Save your breath. You're coming with us to Sakr-el-Drough."

Now this, in the old days, was a name that inspired terror in the African desert. Sakr-el-Drough was a great robber sheik, notorious for his outrageous cruelties, his instability of mood and his Mohammedan piety. Most Christian sailors would have preferred to be thrown back into the ocean. But our Juan Gutierrez was young and levelheaded and in love -- astounding combination! -- and he went cheerfully enough.

The Sheik Sakr-el-Drough sat in the shade, drinking coffee. He was a terrible man, Gutierrez saw -- just like the pet hawk that always perched on his shoulder. "What is your faith?" he asked the prisoner.

Now I have told you that Juan was a quick-witted boy. He was as good a Christian as the next, but he saw no sense in being flayed or impaled on a point of doctrine; so he answered, looking the Sheik straight in the eyes, "I am a servant of God." He added, for the benefit of the superstitious Bedouins, "Also, I am watched over by a djuk."

"A djuk?" asked the Sheik with interest. "Is that some kind of jinn?"

"Did I not come alive through the tempest?" asked Juan, evading the question.

"Hm. Where do you keep this so-called djuk?"

"It keeps me."

"Can your djuk convey you through the air?"

"If need be," said Juan.

"If I threw you off a roof, would he catch you?"

"Of course!" said Juan, boldly; for if worst came to worst, he thought, a speedy death would be preferable to a slow one.

The Sheik said, "I have read of such things but have never seen them." He was evidently in a benign mood today. "I shall put you in a pit from which even a panther could not escape, and we shall see if your djuk can lift you out ... Ho, there!"

So they lowered Juan Gutierrez into an ancient stone grain pit. The deserts of North Africa are full of such forgotten marvels; this pit might have been a thousand years old, or even older. It was shaped roughly like a cone, wide at the bottom, narrow at the top, and lined with stone polished by the centuries. "Fly out of this," said a guard. "The Sheik gives you a hundred days. You shall have food and water every evening. Personally, I think you'd be better off buried alive to the neck in the sand -- the agony only lasts a day, that way. Whistle up your djuk!"

Then Juan touched the stone floor of the grain pit, and saw the guard push a wooden lid into position over the aperture, 25 feet up. He sat down in total darkness, trying to think. He had the navigator's ingrained habit of taking his bearings, so first of all he tried to determine the size of the floor on which he found himself. Prisoners had been kept there before; there was a litter of dried-up mutton bones. Marking a spot with one of these, he measured the circumference of the floor, heel to toe, and decided that it was approximately 63 feet. This meant that the diameter of the floor must be 20 feet, more or less.

Now, lying flat on his back, very stiff and straight, with his heels in the angle where floor and wall met, he measured off about six feet -- which was his height -- and marked the spot where his head rested. Standing on this spot, he found that by raising his hands above his head he could touch the wall of the pit with his knuckles.

In his mind's eye he made a sort of diagram of a cross section of the cone; as he visualized it, eight feet from the floor on which he stood the diameter would be about eight feet, more or less, enough for him to suspend himself across, as an alpinist ascends a rock chimney or couloir.

If only he could find some little ledge for his fingers to grip at that point! But there were no ledges, and he had nothing with which to make one, for he had been stripped naked.

He sat again, wringing his brain for some solution to this problem, but only trivialities came into his mind. He remembered, for instance, that he had bought jade earrings as a gift for Mercedes, and these were now at the bottom of the sea ... Jade, that was it! It came into his mind vividly, now, that someone had told him how the patient Chinese cut this most obdurate of stones by means of string and wet sand.

He had plenty of sand, of the finest and grittiest, which had drifted into the pit. He had a little water. There was no string, but he would use a bone!

He went to work at once, denying himself the little brackish water he so urgently craved."Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes," he kept saying, over and over again. "One little fingerhold, for Mercedes' sake!" The stone was not jade, but it was very hard; yet such was the will of the man that if it had been solid diamond he would have worn it down, my friends!

On the 40th day the Sheik himself deigned to shout down, "You and your djuk do not seem to be doing so well, after all." Juan managed to reply, cheerfully, "Oh, we have really important matters to discuss, noble Sheik. I'll come up shortly."

"Djuk or no djuk, you are a remarkable fellow," said the Sheik, "and I am really interested to see what happens to you."

That evening the guard, as usual, lowered a little basket of food and water, and this time Juan found a large lump of sweet caramel with sesame seeds. "For your djuk," the guard explained, before he pushed back the lid of the pit. Juan ate everything to give himself strength, for his little groove was now about sixinches long and half an inch deep, and tonight he meant to make his attempt.

Having eaten and drunk all the water, he slept until midnight, as nearly as he could guess. Then he stood, facing the wall, reached up, found his fingerhold, and lifted himself. I have told you that he was very agile and strong. Now, hope made him lighter and stronger. He drew himself up to the level of his shoulders, pushed upward and outward with all his might, feeling in the darkness with his toes. His feet touched the opposite wall.

Inch by inch, at first, and then faster as the cone narrowed, Juan Gutierrez worked his way upward; and thankful he was for his horny fingers and his sailor's muscles!

And at last he was under the wooden lid. It was not locked -- who would waste locks on such a dungeon? He pushed. It lifted. He crawled out, silently lowering the lid back into place. The sentry was squatting on his haunches, fast asleep. Juan thought of knocking him on the head, taking his clothes and arms and making a dash for liberty. But he did not know where he was, so where was he to run? He therefore whistled shrilly, and the man awoke, spun round, saw him, and let out a great shout. The Bedouins awakened and came running.

"How is this?" asked the Sheik; and the sentry swore that Juan had been whisked out of the pit before his very eyes, which lie suited Juan very well indeed. The Shiek had him washed and fed."Your djuk seems to have scratched your back rather badly," he remarked.

"Mine is a very rough djuk," said Juan; which was true, since djuk is Gypsy for destiny.

Having feasted him, then, they led him up a long spiral staircase in the ruins where they camped, and put him into a little room with one small unshuttered window. Pointing to this, the Sheik said, "You are free to come and go as you please, with your djuk. It is only 40 feet down to the soft sand."

Then they left him. Juan looked out of the window. The Sheik had not lied; the soft sand was no more than 40 feet below. But between Juan and the sand the wall was planted at various intervals with huge iron hooks, rusted to needle points, and of varying sizes. The nearest row of hooks was 15 feet below the window, which was so set back that a man might not jump clear.

He had heard of this horrid device from another sailor. The Moors would simply drop a criminal from the top of the wall, and wherever the point of a hook took him, there the hapless wretch would hang, until death released him.

Now if I had only six feet of rope! thought Juan Gutierrez. But he had nothing. He was still naked, and his cell was bare. He sat, disconsolate, thinking of all the ropes he had ever handled -- hemp and coir, grass and rawhide, horsehair -- Horsehair! His own hair, disheveled, hung 18 inches long! He had watched the herdsmen plait halters of hair when he was a child, and his mind, as we know, was strong to retain. He had heard somewhere that there were as many as 100,000 hairs on a human head. His own hair was dense, coarse and healthy. What more did he need?

Without delay he set about plucking his scalp, hair by hair, and plaiting a thin but very strong cord.

In six weeks he was completely bald, but his cord was made.

It never occurred to his captors to notice any change in his appearance -- they had seen too many men whom they had kept locked up lose hair, teeth and sanity, too. The Sheik, meanwhile, anxious to see Juan's djuk in action -- or not, as the case might be -- had set up a pavilion by the wall, where he sat watching, smoking and drinking coffee. But our Juan was not disposed to perform for any Sheik's amusement; besides he had learned the value of a little mystification.

So one night, while the Sheik slept, he tied his hair cord to a bolt that had once held a shutter hinge, and let himself down. Once standing on the first hook, the rest was easy: he had only to swing himself down, hand over hand, from one hook to the next, so that in two minutes he was standing unhurt on the sand.

When the sun rose the Sheik came out to praise Allah and Mohammed -- and there stood Juan Gutierrez!

Now the Bedouins were truly amazed. "Join us with your djuk," the Sheik said, "and you shall have high honor." When Juan refused, the Sheik was offended. "Then go," he said, dressing him in new clothes. "Take water, food and a knife; go. I shall give you a day and a night by way of start. On the second day I and my men shall follow you. If we catch you, you are mine. If not, you are free. It is a sportsman's offer," said the Sheik, stroking his hawk, "for you have your djuk, and we have nothing but horses."

They let Juan Gutierrez go, then, and he, traveling by the sun, went north toward the sea. But he knew that his chance of escape was negligible. The going was slow in that soft sand, especially for an unmounted man. With only a day's start, he would surely be run down by the Bedouin horsemen.

Notwithstanding the circumstances, his heart beat high and light. Who else in all the world could have escaped from the pit of darkness and the wall of hooks? Almost he believed in the old gypsy and her Watcher, and his own stories of the so-called djuk -- the desert affects one like that. Thinking always of Mercedes, he strode doggedly northward, where he knew the sea must be, pausing only to swallow a mouthful of water and a handful of dates. He walked throughout the day, and on through the night. But when the second day broke he knew that he was lost.

He found himself in an utterly deserted village which had sprung up and died long before by the ruins of an ancient Roman fort. Here, under a broken triumphal arch, savages had penned goats; there, a villa had been taken to pieces to make huts. In the center of this place still stood a proud column, raised in honor of some deity, emperor or hero. The statue which it might have supported was gone, but the column stood -- chipped, battered, sandblasted, but firm.

By now, Juan reasoned, Sheik Sakr-el-Drough and his horsemen would have set out on their hunt. His tracks would be clear. Where was he to hide? He did not know. Can I bury myself? he asked himself, ironically. Then he was thinking, No, exactly the reverse -- go up into the sky. And, of course, the column was the solution. If he could climb to the top of it, and lie there, who would think of looking for him?

He promptly took off his long robe, his headdress and his boots and hid them carefully under some stones. Barefoot, clad only in wide cotton trousers with his knife at his belt, he approached the shaft of the column. To us it might have seemed unscalable. To a mountaineer, or an experienced sailor, the wind-worn sections offered a multitude of finger-and-toe-holds. He laid hold of the fluted shaft, and began to climb. It was hard, but he was used to hard tasks. Up the shaft he swarmed, up and up to that part of the column which curves gracefully outward -- the cyma recta, as it is called. Here, he had to stop.

It was necessary at this point to make a deadly decision. He could climb down the way he had come up and trust to the tender mercies of the Sheik; or he could launch himself into the air, making in the same instant a closing clasp knife of his body while his long arms strained for the corona of the column -- the very lip of the overhang.

If he missed, he was a dead man.

If he did not miss, he was a dead man; for having reached the platform at the top of the column, there were no earthly means by which he could come down again except by throwing himself off.

He remembered the saying, If we stand still we die, if we go forward we die -- better go forward. Calling on the name of Mercedes, he leaped, and his fingertips hooked the very brow of the cornice.

He dragged himself up and lay, spent, 60 feet above the ground.

Soon, recovering a little, he saw that from his present eminence he commanded a clear view of many miles of the desert in every direction. He recognized certain tiny puffs of smoke far to the south as the dust of the Sheik's riders. Then, regarding the eight-foot square on which he was lying, he found something wrong about it. What? The Romans, in war at least, were a practical people, he had learned. But do practical soldiers build columns in the desert for no reason -- not even to support a statue? There was nothing here but a green bronze ring. He then saw that the ring was attached -- as a handle -- to a circular bronze plate. He pulled at the ring. The plate stirred. A wild excitement surged through him. He pulled steadily with all his might, and the bronze plate swung up on a hinge. The metal was discolored but still strong. The plate was a trap door. The column was hollow, and inside, at regular intervals, were placed spikes for climbing up or down. It was a forgotten Roman observation post!

The Bedouins, when they came, were amazed to find that Juan's tracks had suddenly vanished. Then he called from the top of the column: "Ahoy, Sheik! I am up here, and you are down there, so you have not caught me by a good 60 feet. Well?"

Sakr-el-Drough marveled. Also, he was somewhat afraid. He answered, "Certain things are too wonderful for me. How you got up there I do not know; but of one thing I am certain -- you cannot climb down, unless your djuk carries you again."

"I shall be down before the moon rises," said Juan.

"If you can do that," said the Sheik, "I will fill your hands with jewels and give you safe conduct to the sea, for I have had enough truck with your djuk and your wizardries."

So, at sunset, Juan made his way down and found the panel in the die of the column that opened like a door. It was made to be unrecognizable as such from the outside, but was easy to find from within. Knowing his pursuers would all be gazing skyward in the dim light, he boldly stepped out. Closing the door behind him, and moving quietly as a shadow, Juan appeared in the midst of the Bedouins and said, "Here I am, Sheik."

And the Sheik Sakr-el-Drough kept his word. He let Juan fill a pouch with jewels from his hoarded plunder, and gave him a good horse, and sent him safely to the coast.

There he took passage to Bilbao, where he sold half his jewels to a reputable dealer and, with the proceeds, bought a sound merchant ship complete with her cargo of logwood, renamed her Mercedes, and sailed her south to Malaga.

So Juan Gutierrez married his sweetheart and became the richest merchant in the south of Spain.

• • •

He had told me all this at some length. At last, the doors were opened, and we sprang to our feet as the lady Mercedes herself came in. Forty years before, when she was 80 pounds lighter, I dare say she might have been as Goya painted her. However, I showered her with compliments; but even as I did so, I could see by the old gentleman's eye that he was jealous still! And when I took my leave, Gutierrez came with me to the great gate, and when it was locked after me the watchman handed him the key, which he clutched tight in his tremendous hand.

So I went to my hotel, musing. This strange character, who had cut stone with sand and struggled out of impossible pits, who had let himself out of dungeons and down over walls of hooks while hanging onto his own hair, who had writhed up stark columns and clambered down again in the dark -- all to be his own jailer, in a prison of his own making! Food for thought there, my friends, food for thought ...

• • •

"... Adah Isaacs Menken said, somewhat wistfully, 'Ah, it is sad, is it not, to grow old and lose one's beauty?'

"M. Dumas replied, 'If in his eyes she was young and beautiful still -- then so she was. But as for me, she was old enough to be my mother. This was 30 years ago; it's all one, now.'

"I asked him, 'And Senor Gutierrez?'

"'Oh,' said M.Dumas, 'soon after our meeting, he had some business on the wharves. It was at the height of summer. The heat was sweltering. At siesta hour, he walked toward his carriage. On the way he had to pass an old man leading a wretchedly overloaded horse carrying panniers. The unfortunate animal slipped on the cobblestones. Being badly balanced, she fell bodily, sideways. Poor Gutierrez was in the way. So as she fell in the street she broke his neck against a post.'

"I said, 'So much for djuks!'

"M. Dumas replied, 'Indeed. The peasant, or whoever he was, was terribly upset. He shouted Help! Help! Nieva has fallen upon the poor gentleman! His horse, if washed, would have been white, you see, and so he called her Nieva, nieve being Spanish for snow...Gypsies can be so literal.'

"Then, fearing that he might have put me a little out of countenance, and being the soul of good nature, M. Dumas soon put me at my ease by taking me aside and, confessing that he had left his purse at home, borrowing 10 napoleons.

"The hour being late, our pleasant little party broke up, but I have engaged to dine with M.Dumas again on Friday."

• • •

Here the ms.ended. I sat quietly, my dinner long cold.

My young companion said, "Let's go back and see if Ciuccia has any more."

We did so. Ciuccia growled, "More paper likea dat? I usa for tomato. Gooda paper, holda juice. Allagone. What you wanna for? No good -- alla wrote on."

So we bought a geranium, and he wrapped it in the Book Section of the Times.