“In such amicable conversation time passed, until the priest, bethinking himself that the preparations for Autodafeïng his host, had gone too far to be hushed up without some plausible excuse, and seeing no way out of his dilemma, reluctantly confided his difficulty to the party interested, for whom he began to feel a very disinterested friendship.
“‘Make yourself easy,’ rejoined the other, scarcely able to hide his satisfaction, ‘if that is the whole difficulty, all your worship has to do is to fling my _san-berito_ (faugh! the name makes me hot and cold all over!) into the fire, and give me a chance to clutch your reverend legs, under your worship’s gown.’
“‘_To_ be sure!’ said the curà, in a tone of benignant admiration, which one should get Judge Belton, or the Mayor of Aiken, (who got it from the Spanish original,) to mimic.
“Even the joint sagacity of a cat and a priest may fall short of perfection. It was natural, certainly, for the curà to dream all night of his expected mitre, and allow the same agreeable subject to occupy his brain all day to the exclusion of every other. But I hold to it, that he should have remembered at the right moment, (as he might easily have done, of course, by tying a knot in his handkerchief or thread round his finger,) to slip off the _san-berito_, and _not_ throw his unhappy friend into the fire. Why, but for his confounded (I beg pardon, but one has their feelings!) absence of mind, he might have seen his victim’s tail—his head being smothered in the conical _caroza_—as big as his arm, with rage and indignation.
“‘Wo is me!’ cried the wretched man, when he saw what was done, tearing his beard in anguish of mind, ‘I have burned a Christian cat, and lost my mitre!’”
While saying the last words, Don Pedro, who had been standing during the recital, took his cap and moved to the door. But his countess intercepted him with a wistful, half-perplexed face.
“Well?” said the knight, stopping, and looking at her with a scarce visible smile.
“I think,” returned Hermosa, doubtingly, “you mean I am no wiser than the curà, who, forgetting what he was about, threw his friend into the fire, and then fell to lamenting his loss. But who is the cat?”