Doña Consolacion did not reply. A moving of chairs and trunks could be heard, as though some one was trying to raise a barricade of household furniture. The house fairly shook with the oaths and kicks of the husband. "Don't you come in! Don't you come in!" she said, in a bitter voice. "If you show yourself, I'll shoot you!" The husband calmed down, little by little, and contented himself with pacing from one end of the sala to the other like a wild animal in its cage. "Go and cool your head!" continued the woman in mockery. She seemed to have concluded her preparations for defense. "I swear that when I catch you, no one--not even God--will see you again! I'll smash you so fine." "Yes! Now you can say what you wish. You would not let me go to mass. You would not let me fulfill my duty to God!" she said with such sarcasm as she alone knew how to use. The alferez took his helmet, straightened out his clothes, and walked away several paces. But, at the end of several minutes, he returned without making the slightest noise, for he had taken off his boots. The servants, accustomed to these spectacles, paid no attention to them, but the novelty of this move with the boots attracted their notice and they gave each other the wink. The alferez sat down on a chair next to the door and had the patience to wait more than half an hour. "Have you really gone out or are you there, you he-goat?" asked a voice from time to time, changing the epithets but raising the tone. Finally, she commenced to take away the furniture from her barricade. He heard the noise and smiled. "Orderly! Has the señor gone out?" cried Doña Consolacion. The orderly at a signal from the alferez, replied: "Yes, señora, he has gone out!" He could hear her laugh triumphantly. She drew back the bolt. The husband arose to his feet slowly; the door was opened. A cry, the noise of a body falling, oaths, howling, swearing, blows, hoarse voices. Who can describe what took place in the darkness of the bedroom? The orderly, going out to the kitchen, made a very expressive gesture to the cook. "And now you'll catch it!" said the latter. "I? No, sir. The town will, not I. She asked me if he had gone out, not if he had returned." CHAPTER XXII MIGHT AND RIGHT. It was about ten o'clock at night. The last rockets lazily soared into the dark sky, where paper balloons shone like new stars. Some of the fireworks had set fire to houses and were threatening them with destruction; for this reason men could be seen on the ridges of the roofs carrying buckets of water and long bamboo poles with cloths tied on the ends. Their dark shadows seemed descended from ethereal space to be present at the rejoicings of human beings. An enormous number of wheels had been burned, also castles, bulls, caraboas and other pieces of fireworks, and finally a great volcano, which surpassed in beauty and grandeur anything that the inhabitants of San Diego had ever seen.