The Three-Cornered Hat
Page 10
For nearly three years those delightful evenings continued – until, contrary to everybody’s expectation, Napoleon’s armies burst into Spain, and the Peninsular War broke out. The Lord Bishop, both the Canons – the Magistral and the Penitentiary – died in the year ’08, and the learned Doctor and all the other habitués at those social gatherings in the years ’09, ’10, and ’11, from sheer inability to bear the sight of Frenchmen, Poles, and other foreign invaders smoking their pipes in the side-aisles of the churches while Mass was being said for the troops.
The Corregidor, who never again visited the mill, was deposed by a French Marshal and died in prison at the Royal Palace for being unwilling – be it said to his undying credit – to treat for a single moment with a foreign regime.
Dona Mercedes never remarried. She gave all her children an excellent education and withdrew in her old age to a convent where she ended her days in the odour of sanctity.
Weasel went over to the French.
Master Juan Lopez turned guerilla and led a band. He fell, together with his Alguacil, at the glorious battle of Baza after having personally accounted for many a Frenchman.
Finally, Tio Lucas and Señora Fasquita, though they never had children for all their trip to Solan de Cabras and their endless vows and petitions, continued to love each other as much as ever and reached a very advanced age, having witnessed the passing of the absolute monarchy in 1812 and 1820 and its reappearance in 1814 and 1823, until at length the constitutional system was well and truly established with the death of the absolute King; then they passed to a better life – it was just on the outbreak of the Seven Years’ Civil War – though the beaver hats that everybody affected in those days never banished from their memories the grand old times symbolized by the Three-Cornered Hat.
Notes
p.13, trick played by Judith: A reference to the Book of Judith in the Apochrypha, in which Judith captivates her enemy with her physical beauty before cutting off his head.
p.47, Pomona: The goddess of fruit trees, fruit, gardens and orchards in Roman mythology.
p.49, Tu dixisti… Excusatio non petita, accusatio manifesta. Qualis vir talis oratio: “You said… An excuse when it is not asked for is an admission of guilt. As a man is, so is his speech” (Latin).
p.49, satis jam dictus. Nullus ultra sit sermo: “Enough has already been said. Let there be no more talk” (Latin)