Read Online Zorro by Isabel Allende - Free Book Online Page A

of flies and a stench of carrion that attracted bears and buzzards.
    Twice a week Diego had to make the trip to the San Gabriel mission to receive the rudiments of a proper education from Padre Mendoza.
    Bernardo always went with him, and the missionary eventually allowed him into the class despite his belief that it was unnecessary, and even dangerous, to give Indians too much learning; it put bold ideas into their heads. The boy did not have Diego’s mental quickness and tended to get behind, but he was stubborn and did not back down, though it meant spending his nights burning the candle down to the end. He had a reserved and quiet nature that contrasted with Diego’s explosive happiness. He backed his friend with unquestionable loyalty in all the pranks Diego thought up and, when he had to, resigned without fuss to being punished for something that had been Diego’s idea, not his. Ever since he could walk, Bernardo had assumed the role of protecting Diego, who he believed was destined for great things, like the heroic warriors in White Owl’s storehouse of myths.
    Diego, for whom being quiet and indoors was torture, often schemed to slip away from Padre Mendoza’s lessons and get out in the open. He put as much energy into games as Bernardo did into studying. The lessons came in one ear and he recited them quickly, before they went out the other. He was so good at bluffing that he succeeded in fooling Padre Mendoza, but afterward he would have to teach Bernardo the lesson word for word, and it was by this repetition that he learned. After much discussion they reached an agreement: he would instruct Bernardo, and he in turn would practice the lasso, whip, and sword with Diego.
    “I don’t see why we work so hard to learn things we won’t ever use.”
    Diego complained one day after he had been repeating the same Latin phrases for hours.
    “Sooner or later you use everything,” Bernardo replied. “It’s like the sword. I will probably never be a dragoon, but it is still good to learn fencing.”
    Very few citizens of Alta California knew how to read and write, except the missionaries; they were rough men, nearly all from the country, but they at least had a varnish of culture. There were no available books, and on the rare occasions that a letter arrived, it was assumed that it contained bad news, so the addressee was in no rush to take it to a friar and ask him to decipher it. Alejandro de la Vega, however, had a fancy for education, and for years he had tried to attract a teacher from Mexico City. By then, Pueblo de los Angeles had grown to more than the town with four streets that he had seen born; it had become a required stop for travelers, a place for sailors from the merchant ships to rest ashore, and the center of the region’s commerce.
    Monterey, the capital, was a long way away, so most matters of government were aired in Pueblo de los Angeles. Except for authorities and military officers, the population was mixed, referred to as gente de razon, respectable people, to distinguish them from Indians and servants. Pure-blooded Spaniards were a class apart. The town now had a bull ring, a brand-new brothel staffed by three half-Mexican girls of negotiable virtue, and an opulent mulatto from Panama, whose price was fixed and not cheap. There was now a building for the meetings of the alcalde and the councilman, which also acted as a courthouse and theater where light operas, moralistic plays, and patriotic ceremonies were presented. A bandstand had been built in the Plaza de Armas, and musicians enlivened the evening hour of the paseo when, under the watchful eyes of their parents, young promenaders, looking their very best, strolled around the plaza, the girls in one direction and the boys in the other. But hotel? There still was none; it would be ten years before the first was built. Travelers took lodging in the homes of wealthy citizens, where there was always food and a bed to welcome anyone in need