Of the Calle Del Puente Del Cuervo

As you know, Senor, in the street that is called the Street of the Bridge of the Raven, there nowadays is no bridge at all; also, the house is gone in which this Don Rodrigo de Ballesteros lived with his raven in the days when he was alive. As to the raven, however, matters are less certain. My grand-father long ago told me that more than once, on nights of storm, he had heard that evil bird uttering his wicked caws at midnight between the thunderclaps; and a most respectable cargador of my acquaintance has given me his word for it that he has heard those cawings too. Yet if they still go on it must be the raven's spectre that gives voice to them; because, Senor, while ravens are very long-lived birds, it is improbable that they live -- and that much time has passed since these matters happened -- through more than the whole of three hundred years.

This Don Rodrigo in his youth, Senor, was a Captain of Arcabuceros in the Royal Army; and, it seems, he fought so well with his crossbowmen at the battle of San Quintin (what they were fighting 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, Senor, 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.