not having provided for our wearing a couple of
false noses, which would have been enough to placate the just resentment of
those people. We might have also joined in the dance, but for some reason or
other it didn't occur to us; and I heard once a high, clear woman's voice
stigmatizing us for a species of swelled heads (espèce d'enflés). We proceeded
sedately, my companion muttered with rage, and I was able to resume my thinking.
It was based on the deep persuasion that the man at my side was insane with
quite another than Carnivalesque lunacy which comes on at one stated time of the
year. He was fundamentally mad, though not perhaps completely; which of course
made him all the greater, I won't say danger but, nuisance.
    I remember once a young doctor expounding the theory that most catastrophes
in family circles, surprising episodes in public affairs and disasters in
private life, had their origin in the fact that the world was full of half-mad
people. He asserted that they were the real majority. When asked whether he
considered himself as belonging to the majority, he said frankly that he didn't
think so; unless the folly of voicing this view in a company, so utterly unable
to appreciate all its horror, could be regarded as the first symptom of his own
fate. We shouted down him and his theory, but there is no doubt that it had
thrown a chill on the gaiety of our gathering.
    We had now entered a quieter quarter of the town and Señor Ortega had ceased
his muttering. For myself I had not the slightest doubt of my own sanity. It was
proved to me by the way I could apply my intelligence to the problem of what was
to be done with Señor Ortega. Generally, he was unfit to be trusted with any
mission whatever. The instability of his temper was sure to get him into a
scrape. Of course carrying a letter to Headquarters was not a very complicated
matter; and as to that I would have trusted willingly a properly trained dog. My
private letter to Doña Rita, the wonderful, the unique letter of farewell, I had
given up for the present. Naturally I thought of the Ortega problem mainly in
the terms of Doña Rita's safety. Her image presided at every council, at every
conflict of my mind, and dominated every faculty of my senses. It floated before
my eyes, it touched my elbow, it guarded my right side and my left side; my ears
seemed to catch the sound of her footsteps behind me,