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“I tell you I want no Moorish girls,” said Don Bonifacio. “What I want to-day is that you, who know so much that you are Interpreter of the Fortress, should translate this document into Spanish for me.”

Manos-gordas took the document, and at the first glance murmured:

“It is Moor–“

“Of course, it is in Arabic. But I want to know what it says, and if you do not deceive me I will give you a handsome present–when the business which I am about to entrust you with is concluded.”

Meantime Admet-Ben-Carime glanced his eye over the document, turning very pale as he did so.

“You see that it concerns a great treasure?” the Chapel-master half-affirmed, half-asked.

“Me think so,” stammered the Mohammedan.

“What do you mean by saying you think so? Your very confusion tells plainly that it is so.”

“Pardon,” replied Manos-gordas, a cold sweat breaking out over his body. “Here words modern Arabic–I understand. Here words ancient, or classic Arabic–I no understand.”

“What do the words that you understand signify?”

“They signify GOLD, they signify PEARLS, they signify CURSE OF ALA. But I no understand meaning, explanations, or signs. Must see the Dervish of Anghera–wise man and translate all. I take parchment to day and bring parchment to-morrow, and deceive not nor rob Senor Tudela. Moor swear.”

Saying which he clasped his hands together, and, raising them to his lips, kissed them fervently.

Don Bonifacio reflected; he knew that in order to decipher the meaning of this document he should be obliged to take some Moor into his confidence, and there was none with whom he was so well acquainted and who was so well disposed to him as Manos-gordas; he consented, therefore, to confide the manuscript to him, making him swear repeatedly that he would return on the following day from Anghera with the translation, and swearing to the Moor on his side that he would give him at least a hundred dollars when the treasure should be discovered.

The Mussulman and the Christian then separated, and the latter directed his steps, not to his own house, nor to the cathedral, but to the office of a friend of his, where he wrote the following letter:

“Senor Don Matias de Quesada y Sanchez, Alpujarra, Ugijar.

“MY DEAREST UNCLE,–Thanks be to God that we have at last received news of you and of Aunt Encarnacion, and as good news as Josefa and I could desire. We, my dear uncle, although younger than you and my aunt, are full of ailments and burdened with children, who will soon be left orphans and compelled to beg for their bread.

“Whoever told you that the document you sent me bore any reference to a treasure deceived you. I have had it translated by a competent person, and it turns out to be a string of blasphemies against our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Virgin, and the Saints, written in Arabic verses, by a Moorish dog of the Marquisate of El Cenet, during the rebellion of Aben-Humeya. In view of its sacrilegious nature, and by the advice of the Senor Penitentiary, I have just burned this impious testimony to Mohammedan perversity.

“Remembrances to my aunt; Josefa desires to be remembered to you both; she is now for the tenth time in an interesting condition, and your nephew, who is reduced to skin and bone by the wretched affection of the stomach, which you will remember, begs that you will send him some assistance.

“BONIFACIO.

“CEUTA, January 29, 1821.”

VII.

While the Chapel-master was writing and posting this letter, Admet-el-Abdoun was gathering together in a bundle all his wearing apparel and household belongings, consisting of three old hooded mantles, two cloaks of goat’s wool, a mortar for grinding alcazuz, an iron lamp, and a copper skillet full of pesetas, which he dug up from a corner of the little yard of his house. He loaded with all this his one wife, slave, odalisque, or whatever she might be, a woman uglier than an unexpected piece of bad news, and filthier than her husband’s conscience, and issued forth from Ceuta, telling the soldier on guard at the gate opening on the Moorish country that they were going to Fez for change of air, by the advice of a veterinary; and as from that day–now more than sixty years ago–to this no one in Ceuta or its neighborhood has ever again seen Manos-gordas, it is obvious that Don Bonifacio Tudela y Gonzalez had not the satisfaction of receiving from his hands the translation of the document, either on the following, or on any other day during the remainder of his existence; which, indeed, cannot have been very long, since, according to reliable information, it appears that his adored Pepita took to herself, after his death, another husband, an Asturian drum-major residing in Marbella, whom she presented with four children, beautiful as the sun, and that she was again a widow at the time of the death of the king, at which epoch she gained, by competition in Malaga, the title of gossip and the position of matron in the custom-house.