The Purple Land | Page 9

friend, I perceive you are a traveller from Montevideo: may I ask what news there is from that city?"
"What news do you expect to hear?" said I; then it came into my thought that it was scarcely proper to confine myself to more commonplace phrases in replying to this curious old Oriental bird, with such ragged plumage, but whose native woodnotes wild had such a charm in them. "It is only the old story over again!" I continued. "They say there will be a revolution some day. Some of the people have already retired into their houses, after chalking in very big letters on their front doors, 'Please come into this house and cut the owner's throat for him, so that he may rest at peace, and have no fear of what may happen.' Others have climbed on to their roofs, and occupy themselves there looking at the moon through spy-glasses, thinking that the conspirators are concealed in that luminary, and only waiting for a cloud to obscure it, in order to descend upon the city unobserved."
"Hear!" cried the old man, rapping delighted applause on the counter with his empty glass.
"What do you drink, friend?" I asked, thinking his keen appreciation of my grotesque speech deserved a treat, and wishing to draw him out a little more.
"Rum, friend, thank you. They say it warms you in winter, and cools you in summer--what can you have better?"
"Tell me," said I, when his glass had been refilled by the storekeeper, "what I shall say when I return to Montevideo, and am asked what news there is in the country?"
The old fellow's eyes twinkled, while the other men ceased talking, and looked at him as if anticipating something good in reply to my question.
"Say to them," he answered, "that you met an old man--a horse tamer named Lucero--and that he told you this fable for you to repeat to the townspeople: Once there was a great tree named Montevideo growing in this country, and in its branches lived a colony of monkeys. One day one of the monkeys came down from the tree and ran full of excitement across the plain, now scrambling along like a man on all fours, then erect like a dog running on its hind legs, while its tail, with nothing to catch hold of, wriggled about like a snake when its head is under foot. He came to a place where a number of oxen were grazing, and some horses, ostriches, deer, goats, and pigs. 'Friends all,' cried the monkey, grinning like a skull, and with staring eyes round as dollars, 'great news! great news! I come to tell you that there will shortly be a revolution.' 'Where?' said an ox. 'In the tree--where else?' said the monkey. 'That does not concern us,' said the ox. 'Oh, yes, it does!' cried the monkey, 'for it will presently spread about the country and you will all have your throats cut.' Then the ox replied, 'Go back, monkey, and do not molest us with your news, lest we get angry and go to besiege you in your tree, as we have often had to do since the creation of the world; and then, if you and the other monkeys come down to us, we will toss you on our horns.'"
This apologue sounded very well, so admirably did the old man picture to us with voice and gesture the chattering excitement of the monkey and the majestic aplomb of the ox.
"Se?or," he continued, after the laugh had subsided, "I do not wish any of my friends and neighbours here present to fly to the conclusion that I have spoken anything offensive. Had I seen in you a Montevidean I should not have spoken of monkeys. But, se?or, though you speak as we do, there is yet in the pepper and salt on your tongue a certain foreign flavour."
"You are right," I said; "I am a foreigner."
"A foreigner in some things, friend, for you were doubtless born under other skies; but in that chief quality, which we think was given by the Creator to us and not to the people of other lands--the ability to be one in heart with the men you meet, whether they are clothed in velvet or in sheep-skins--in that you are one of us, a pure Oriental."
I smiled at his subtle flattery; possibly it was only meant in payment of the rum I had treated him to, but it pleased me none the less, and to his other mental traits I was now inclined to add a marvellous skill in reading character.
After a while he invited me to spend the night under his roof. "Your horse is fat and lazy," he said with truth, "and, unless you are a relation of the owl family, you cannot go