The Aztec Treasure-House | Page 7

curious, involved formation of the several
letters, the extraordinary abbreviations, the antique spelling, the strange
forms of expression, and the use of obsolete words I could not make
sense of so much as a single line. Yet when, being forced into
inglorious surrender, I carried the manuscripts to the Museo, and
appealed to Don Rafael for assistance, he read to me in fluent Spanish
all that I had found so utterly incomprehensible. "It is only a knack," he
explained. "A little time and patience are required at first, but then all
comes easily." But Don Rafael did here injustice to his own scholarship.
More than a little time and patience have I since given to the study of
ancient Spanish script, and I am even yet very far from being an expert
in the reading of it.

In regard to the other promise that Fray Antonio made me--that he
would send me a servant who also would serve as a practical instructor
in the Nahua, or Aztec, dialect--he was equally punctual. While I was
taking, in my bedroom, my first breakfast of bread and coffee the
morning following my visit to the church of San Francisco, I heard a
faint sound of music; but whether it was loud music at a distance or
very soft music near at hand I could not tell. Presently I perceived that
the musician was feeling about among the notes for the sabre song from
La Grande Duchesse--selections from which semi-obsolete opera, as I
then remembered, had been played by the military band on the plaza
the evening before. Gradually the playing grew more assured; until it
ended in an accurate and spirited rendering of the air. With this triumph,
the volume of the sound increased greatly; and from its tones I inferred
that the instrument was a concertina, and that whoever played it was in
the inner court-yard of the hotel. Suddenly, in the midst of the music,
there sounded--and this sound unmistakably came from the hotel
court-yard--the prodigious braying of an ass; and accompanying this
came the soft sound of bare feet hurrying away down the passage from
near my door.
I opened the door and looked out, but the passage was empty. The
gallery overlooked the court-yard, and stepping to the edge of the low
stone railing, I beheld a sight that I never recall without a feeling of
warm tenderness. Almost directly beneath me stood a small gray ass, a
very delicately shaped and perfect little animal, with a coat of most
extraordinary length and fuzziness, and with ears of a truly prodigious
size. His head was raised, and his great ears were pricked forward in a
fashion which indicated that he was most intently listening; and upon
his face was an expression of such benevolent sweetness, joined to such
thoughtfulness and meditative wisdom, that in my heart (which is very
open to affection for his gentle kind) there sprung up in a moment a
real love for him. Suddenly he lowered his head, and turned eagerly his
regard towards the corner of the court-yard where descended the
stair-way from the gallery on which I stood; and from this quarter came
towards him a smiling, pleasant-faced Indian lad of eighteen or twenty
years old, whose dress was a cotton shirt and cotton trousers, whose
feet were bare, and on whose head was a battered hat of straw. And as

the ass saw the boy, he strained at the cord that tethered him and gave
another mighty bray.
"Dost thou call me, Wise One?" said the boy, speaking in Spanish.
"Truly this Señor Americano is a lazy señor, that he rises so late, and
keeps us waiting for his coming so long. But patience, Wise One. The
Padre says that he is a good gentleman, in whose service we shall be
treated as though we were kings. No doubt I now can buy my rain-coat.
And thou, Wise One--thou shalt have beans!"
And being by this time come to the ass, the boy enfolded in his arms
the creature's fuzzy head and gently stroked its preternaturally long ears.
And the ass, for its part, responded to the caress by rubbing its head
against the boy's breast and by most energetically twitching its scrag of
a tail. Thus for a little time these friends manifested for each other their
affection; and then the boy seated himself on the pavement beside the
ass and drew forth from his pocket a large mouth-organ--on which he
went to work with such a will that all the court-yard rang with the
strains of Offenbach's music.
It was plain from what he had said that this was the boy whom Fray
Antonio had promised to send to me; and notwithstanding his
uncomplimentary comments upon my laziness, I had taken already