The Watchful Servant

” Saying which he again retired to rest.

“Since the days when cocks crew in the Holy Land they have always brought sorrow into this world,” inwardly ejaculated Pablo. “His proper place is in the pan, and that is where he should go if I had my way.”

All at once Pablo commenced to feel very sleepy, so he walked up and down the yard to keep awake; but becoming drowsy he sank on the ground, and was soon so fast asleep that he dreamt a nigger prince was attacking him, which made him scream so terribly that it woke, not only the prince, but also all the dogs in the neighbourhood.

The prince again rushed to the window, and hearing Pablo scream out, “Don’t murder me, I will give you all!” hurried down into the yard, and seeing how matters stood bestowed such a hearty kick on Pablo that he jumped up.

The frightened barber beholding the prince near to him, took to his heels, and ran home as fast as he could.

When he had got into bed he began regretting that he had run away from the prince’s service, so he got up again, saying to himself, “The prince shall have a sharper spur than I could ever buckle on;” and, proceeding to the principal door of the palace, he wrote the following words with chalk, “Pablo has gone before your highness to court the Princess of Granada himself.”

This had the desired effect, for when the prince arose in the morning and was leaving the palace alone, he read the words, and they caused him to be so jealous that he performed the distance in half the time he would otherwise have taken.

Pablo after that used to say that “a jealous man on horseback is first cousin to a flash of lightning and to a true Spaniard.”