The Marquis of Bolibar by Leo Perutz Page B

very town, fifty years ago, and he's just as the old man described him: for ever vehement and choleric, his face the colour of death and his brow encircled by a bandage that conceals the fiery cross."
    "His portrait hangs in the cathedral at Cordoba," said the priest, "and beneath it are the words: Tu enim, stulte Hebrœe, tuum deum non cognovisti, which is to say, 'Thou foolish Jew, thou didst not —'"
    He, too, became aware of the colonel's presence and fell silent. After a general exchange of salutations we all took our places at table, I between Donop and the priest.
    Monjita, recognizing Captain Brockendorf as the man with whom she had spoken that morning, smiled at him, and I, as I watched her sitting beside the colonel in the white, high- necked muslin gown we all knew so well, was truly tempted to believe, if only for a moment, that she was the Françoise-Marie whose memory I had never been able to banish.
    Donop seemed to feel as I did, for he left his plate untouched and never took his eyes off her.
    "Donop," the colonel called across the table as he tempered his Chambertin with water, "you or Eglofstein must play us something on the pianoforte after dinner. Your health, Señor Cura!"
    "Donop," I whispered to my day-dreaming table companion, "the colonel was addressing you." He gave a start and sighed.
    "Ah, Boethius!" he said softly. "Ah, Seneca! Great philosophers though you were, how little have all your writings availed me!"
    The meal proceeded, and I remember its course as if it were yesterday. The lofty windows facing me afforded an extensive view of snow-mantled hills on which isolated bushes stood out like dark shadows. Jackdaws and ravens fluttered across the fields, and in the distance a peasant woman rode her donkey toward the town, a basket on her head and a child on her lap. None of us guessed what a transformation would overtake the peaceful countryside that very day, nor could we know that we were enjoying the last harmonious hour we were ever to be granted within the walls of La Bisbal.
    Günther, seated beside the alcalde, regaled him with a loud and boastful account of his feats of arms and his travels in France and Spain. My neighbour on the right, the priest, while applying himself with alacrity to the food and wine, lectured me on matters of which he assumed me to be ignorant — for instance, that the region was very hot in summer, that the countryside abounded in figs and grapes, and that fish, too, were plentiful by reason of the sea's proximity.
    All of a sudden Brockendorf sniffed the air several times, smote the table with his hand, and let out an exultant cry.
    "The dish has conceived and brought forth a roast goose — I can smell it from here!"
    "Damnation," said the colonel, "you guessed it. Very perceptive of you."
    "It comes at a blessed hour, does the goose," Brockendorf declared, brandishing his fork. "Let us greet it with a Con quibus or a Salue regi na! "
    "Hush, Brockendorf," said Donop, as embarrassed on the priest's account as the rest of us. "Forms of worship are no fit subject for mockery."
    "Keep your homilies to yourself, Donop," Brockendorf growled. "You're no theologian, God knows." The priest, however, had understood none of this but " Salue regina ".
    "The Bishop of Plasencia," he said, helping himself to a drumstick from the dish, "the Most Reverend Don Juan Manrique de Lara, grants forty days' worth of indulgences to all who say a Salue regina before Our Lady's statue."
    "Don't stint yourself, sir," Brockendorf benevolently urged the alcalde. "When one dish is empty, another will be brought."
    "Our beloved Maria del Pilar," pursued the priest, "is admired and revered throughout the world, having accomplished as many miracles as the Maria de Guadalupe or the Virgin of Montserrat. Why, only last year ..."
    The words stuck in his throat, together with a morsel of roast goose, and his startled eyes sought those of the alcalde.
    Both men stared in alarm at the door.