“The next day I went to the _Calle del Candilejo_. Carmen kept me waiting, and when she came, she was in rather a bad temper. “‘I don’t like people who have to be pressed,’ she said. ‘You did me a much greater service the first time, without knowing you’d gain anything by it. Yesterday you bargained with me. I don’t know why I’ve come, for I don’t care for you any more. Here, be off with you. Here’s a douro for your trouble.’ “I very nearly threw the coin at her head, and I had to make a violent effort to prevent myself from actually beating her. After we had wrangled for an hour I went off in a fury. For some time I wandered about the town, walking hither and thither like a madman. At last I went into a church, and getting into the darkest corner I could find, I cried hot tears. All at once I heard a voice. “‘A dragoon in tears. I’ll make a philter of them!’ “I looked up. There was Carmen in front of me. “‘Well, _mi payllo_, are you still angry with me?’ she said. ‘I must care for you in spite of myself, for since you left me I don’t know what has been the matter with me. Look you, it is I who ask you to come to the _Calle del Candilejo_, now!’ “So we made it up: but Carmen’s temper was like the weather in our country. The storm is never so close, in our mountains, as when the sun is at its brightest. She had promised to meet me again at Dorotea’s, but she didn’t come. “And Dorotea began telling me again that she had gone off to Portugal about some gipsy business. “As experience had already taught me how much of that I was to believe, I went about looking for Carmen wherever I thought she might be, and twenty times in every day I walked through the _Calle del Candilejo_. One evening I was with Dorotea, whom I had almost tamed by giving her a glass of anisette now and then, when Carmen walked in, followed by a young man, a lieutenant in our regiment. “‘Get away at once,’ she said to me in Basque. I stood there, dumfounded, my heart full of rage. “‘What are you doing here?’ said the lieutenant to me. ‘Take yourself off--get out of this.’ “I couldn’t move a step. I felt paralyzed. The officer grew angry, and seeing I did not go out, and had not even taken off my forage cap, he caught me by the collar and shook me roughly. I don’t know what I said to him. He drew his sword, and I unsheathed mine. The old woman caught hold of my arm, and the lieutenant gave me a wound on the forehead, of which I still bear the scar. I made a step backward, and with one jerk of my elbow I threw old Dorotea down. Then, as the lieutenant still pressed me, I turned the point of my sword against his body and he ran upon it. Then Carmen put out the lamp and told Dorotea, in her own language, to take to flight. I fled into the street myself, and began running along, I knew not whither. It seemed to me that some one was following me. When I came to myself I discovered that Carmen had never left me.