We went, then, to Don Pedro’s, down a steep, uneven street, stopped every few feet by boisterous bankrupts who wanted to know where a man could establish credit for liquor. Don Pedro’s was a considerable house, for he was the village rich man. The open square which his buildings enclosed would have been a corral ordinarily; but Don Pedro could afford a patio, and it was full of fragrant shrubs and barrel cacti,—a rude fountain pouring from an old iron pipe in the center. The entrance to this was a narrow, black archway, in which sat the town orchestra playing. A pine torch was stuck by its pitch against the outside wall, and under this a man took up fifty-cent pieces for the entrance fee. We watched for some time, but nobody seemed to be paying anything. A clamorous mob stood around him, pleading special privilege—that they ought to get in free. One was Don Pedro’s cousin; another his gardener; a third had married the daughter of his mother-in-law by his first marriage; one woman insisted that she was the mother of a performer. There were other entrances at which no guardian stood; and through these, when they found themselves unable to cajole the gentleman at the main door, the crowd placidly sifted. We paid our money amid an awed silence and entered. White, burning moonlight flooded the place. The patio sloped upward along the side of the mountain, where there was no wall to stop the view of great planes of shining upland, tilted to meet the shallow jade sky. To the low roof of the house a canopy of canvas drooped out over a flat place, supported by slanting poles, like the pavilion of a Bedouin king. Its shadow cut the moonlight blacker than night. Six torches stuck in the ground around the outside of the place sent up thin lines of pitchy smoke. There was no other light under the canopy, except the restless gleams of innumerable cigarettes. Along the wall of the house stood black-robed women with black mantillas over their heads, the men-folks squatting at their feet. Wherever there was space between their knees were children. Men and women alike smoked their cigarros, handing them placidly down so that the little ones might take a puff. It was a quiet audience, speaking little and softly, perfectly content to wait, watching the moonlight in the patio, and listening to the music, which sounded far away in the arch. A nightingale burst into song somewhere among the shrubs, and all of us fell ecstatically silent, listening to it. Small boys were dispatched to tell the band to stop while the song went on. That was very exciting.