The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3, June, 1851Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3, June, 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
The villagers of Quacos alone furnished some exceptions to the respect
in which their imperial neighbor was held. Although they received the
greater part of the hundred ducats which he dispensed every month for
charitable purposes, they poached the trout in the fish-ponds which
had been formed for his service in Garganta la Olla; and they drove
his cows to the parish pound whenever they strayed beyond their
legitimate pastures. One fellow having sold the crop on his
cherry-tree, at double its value, to the emperor's purveyor, when he
found that it was left ungathered for a few days, took the opportunity
of disposing of it a second time to another purchaser, who, of course,
left nothing but bare boughs to the rightful owner of the fruit.
Wearied with these annoyances, the emperor complained to the president
of Castille, who administered to the district judge, one Licentiate
Murga, a severe rebuke, which that functionary, in his turn, visited
upon the unruly rustics. Several culprits were apprehended; but while
Castillian justice was taking its deliberate course, some of them who
were related to friars of Yuste, by the influence of their friends at
court, got the emperor himself to petition that the sentence might be
light.
To his servants Charles was a kind and lenient master. He bore
patiently with Adrian the cook, though he left the cinnamon that he
loved out of the dishes; and he contented himself with mildly
admonishing Pelayo, the baker, who got drunk and neglected his oven,
of which the result was burnt bread that sorely tried the toothless
gums of his master. His old military habits, however, still adhered to
him, and though gentle in his manner of enforcing it, he was something
of a martinet in maintaining the discipline of his household and the
convent. Nor had he lost that love of petty economies which made him
sit bare-headed in the rain without the walls of Naumburg, saving a
new velvet cap under his arm, while they fetched him an old one from
the town. Observing in his walks, or from his window, that a certain
basket daily came and went between his garden and the garden of the
friars, he caused Moron to institute an examination, which led to the
harmless discovery that his Flemings were in the habit of bartering
egg-plants with the Jeromites for onions. He had also been disturbed
by suspicious gatherings of young women at the convent-gate, who stood
there gossiping under pretence of receiving alms. When the visitors
came their rounds, he therefore brought the matter under their notice.
The result of the complaint was that the conventional dole was ordered
to be sent round in certain portions to the alcaldes of the various
villages, for distribution on the spot; and, moreover, the crier went
down the straggling, uneven street of Quacos, making the ungallant
proclamation, that any woman who should be found nearer to Yuste than
a certain oratory, about two gunshots from the gate, should be
punished with a hundred stripes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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