“My first days in prison passed dismally enough. When I enlisted I had imagined that I should at least become an officer. Longa and Mina, countrymen of mine, are captains-general; Chapalangarra, who, like Mina, is a negro and is a refugee in your country--Chapalangarra was a colonel, and I have played tennis twenty times with his brother, who was a poor devil like myself. Now I said to myself: ‘All the time that you have served without punishment is time thrown away. Here you are blacklisted, and to regain the good graces of your superiors, you will have to work ten times harder than when you first enlisted! And why did you receive punishment? For a gypsy hussy, who made a fool of you, and who is doubtless stealing at this moment in some corner of the city.’--But I could not help thinking of her. Would you believe it, señor? I had always before my eyes her silk stockings, full of holes, which she had shown me from top to bottom when she ran away. I looked through the bars into the street, and among all the women who passed I did not see a single one who could be compared with that devil of a girl! And then, too, in spite of myself, I smelt of the cassia flower she had thrown at me, which, although it had withered, still retained its sweet odour. If there are such things as witches, that girl was one! “One day the jailer came in and gave me an Alcala[14] loaf. “‘Here,’ said he, ‘your cousin sends you this.’ “I took the loaf, greatly surprised, for I had no cousin in Seville. ‘It may be a mistake,’ I thought as I glanced at the loaf; but it was so appetising, it smelt so good, that, without disturbing myself as to whence it came or for whom it was intended, I determined to eat it. On attempting to cut it my knife came in contact with something hard. I investigated and found a small English file, which had been slipped into the dough before baking. There was also in the loaf a gold piece of two piastres. There was no more doubt in my mind; it was a gift from Carmen. To people of her race freedom is everything, and they would set fire to a city to save themselves from a day in prison. However, she was a shrewd minx, and with that loaf one could snap one’s fingers at jailers. In an hour’s time the stoutest bar could be sawed through with the little file; and with the two piastres I could exchange my uniform for a civilian’s coat at the first old clo’-man’s. You may imagine that a man who had many a time taken young eaglets from their nests on our cliffs would not have been at a loss to climb down into the street from a window less than thirty feet high. But I did not wish to escape. I still possessed my honour as a soldier, and to desert seemed to me a heinous crime. However, I was touched by that token of remembrance. When you are in prison you like to think that you have a friend outside who is interested in you. The gold piece disturbed me a little, and I would have liked to return it; but where was I to find my creditor?