LEGENDS OF THE CITY OF MEXICO
This Don Rodrigo in his youth, Señor, was a Captain of Arcabuceros in the Royal Army; and, it seems, he fought so well with his cross-bowmen at the battle of San Quintin (what they were righting about I do not know) that the King of Spain rewarded him—when the fighting was all over and there was no more need for his services—by making him a royal commissioner here in Mexico: that he might get rich comfortably in his declining years. It was the Encomienda of Atzcapotzalco that the King gave to him; and in those days Atzcapotzalco was a very rich place, quite away from the City westward, and yielded a great revenue for Don Rodrigo to have the fingering of. Nowadays, as you know, Señ ñor, it is almost a part of the City, because you get to it in the electric cars so quickly; and it has lost its good fortune and is but a dreary little threadbare town.
It was with the moneys which stuck to his fingers from his collectorship—just as the King meant that they should stick, in reward for his good fighting—that Don Rodrigo built for himself his fine house in the street that is now called, because of the bridge that once
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