Сердца трех / Hearts of Three

�The three stars have worked a miracle. Behold! Have they not unlocked Augustino’s mouth?’

�And thrice times thrice again was the old man a fool!’ Augustino bellowed fiercely. �The very drink of the gods was his, all his, and he has been five days alone with it on the road from Bocas del Toro, and never taken one little sip. Such fools as he should be stretched out naked on an ant-heap, say I.’

�The old man was a rogue,’ quote Pedro. �And when he comes back to-morrow for his three stars I shall arrest him for a smuggler.

It will be a feather in all our caps.’ If we destroy the evidence thus?’ queried Augustino, knocking off another neck.

�We will save the evidence thus!’ Pedro replied, smashing an empty bottle on the stone flags. �Listen, comrades. The box was very heavy we are all agreed. It fell. The bottles broke. The liquor ran out, and so were we made aware of the contraband. The box and the broken bottles will be evidence sufficient.

’

The uproar grew as the liquor diminished. One gendarme quarreled with Ignacio over a forgotten debt of ten centavos. Two others sat upon the floor, arms around each other’s necks, and wept over the miseries of their married lot. Augustino, like a very spendthrift of speech, explained his philosophy that silence was golden. And Pedro Zurita became sentimental on brotherhood.

�Even my prisoners,’ he maundered. �I love them as brothers.

Life is sad.’ A gush of tears in his eyes made him desist while he took another drink. �My prisoners are my very children. My heart bleeds for them. Behold! I weep. Let us share with them. Let them have a moment’s happiness. Ignacio, dearest brother of my heart.

Do me a favor. See, I weep on your hand. Carry a bottle of this elixir to the Gringo Morgan. Tell him my sorrow that he must hang to-morrow. Give him my love and bid him drink and be happy to-day.

’

And as Ignacio passed out on the errand, the gendarme who had once leapt into the bull-ring at Santos, began roaring:

�I want a bull! I want a bull!’

�He wants it, dear soul, that he may put his arms around it and love it,’ Pedro Zurita explained, with a fresh access of weeping. �I, too, love bulls. I love all things. I love even mosquitoes. All the world is love. That is the secret of the world.