Don Vegal wished to see this woman whose image troubled the mind of
Martin Paz. He repaired, at evening, to the Plaza-Mayor. The crowd was
always numerous there. There he met Father Joachim de Camarones, his
confessor and his oldest friend; he acquainted him with his mode of
life. What was the astonishment of the good father to learn the
existence of Martin Paz. He promised Don Vegal to watch also himself
over the young Indian, and to convey to the marquis any intelligence of
importance.
Suddenly the glances of Don Vegal rested on a young girl, enveloped in a
black mantle, reclining in a caleche.
"Who is that beautiful person?" asked he of the father.
"It is the betrothed of Andre Certa, the daughter of the Jew Samuel."
"She! the daughter of the Jew!"
The marquis could hardly suppress his astonishment, and, pressing the
hand of Father Joachim, pensively took the road to Chorillos.
He had just recognized in Sarah, the pretended Jewess, the young girl
whom he had seen praying with such Christian fervor, at the church of
Santa Anna.
CHAPTER V.
THE HATRED OF THE INDIANS.
Since the Colombian troops, confided by Bolivar to the orders of General
Santa Cruz, had been driven from lower Peru, this country, which had
been incessantly agitated by _pronunciamentos_, military revolts, had
recovered some calmness and tranquillity.
In fact, private ambition no longer had any thing to expect; the
president Gambarra seemed immovable in his palace of the Plaza-Mayor. In
this direction there was nothing to fear; but the true danger,
concealed, imminent, was not from these rebellions, as promptly
extinguished as kindled, and which seemed to flatter the taste of the
Americans for military parades.
This unknown peril escaped the eyes of the Spaniards, too lofty to
perceive it, and the attention of the mestizoes, who never wished to
look beneath them.
And yet there was an unusual agitation among the Indians of the city;
they often mingled with the _serranos_, the inhabitants of the
mountains; these people seemed to have shaken off their natural apathy.
Instead of rolling themselves in their _ponchos_, with their feet turned
to the spring sun, they were scattered throughout the country, stopping
one another, exchanging private signals, and haunting the least
frequented _pulperias_, in which they could converse without danger.
This movement was principally to be observed on one of the squares
remote from the centre of the city. At the corner of a street stood a
house, of only one story, whose wretched appearance struck the eye
disagreeably.
A tavern of the lowest order, a _chingana_, kept by an old Indian woman,
offered to the lowest _zambos_ the _chica_, beer of fermented maize, and
the _quarapo_, a beverage made of the sugar-cane.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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