You shall have two young unbroken geldings of two years in
exchange for the mare. Could you make a better exchange? Were you ever
treated more generously? If you refuse it will be out of spite, and I
shall know how to treat you. When you lose your animals and are
broken, when your children are sick with fever, when your wife is
starving, you shall not come to me for a horse to ride on, nor for
money, nor meat, nor medicine, since you will have me for an enemy
instead of a friend."
That, they say, was how he raged and bullied when he met with a
repulse from a poor neighbour. So fond was Don Gregorio of his
piebalds that he spent the greater part of every day on horseback with
his different herds of mares, each led by its own proud piebald
stallion. He was perpetually waiting and watching with anxious
interest for the appearance of a new foal. If it turned out not a
piebald he cared nothing more about it, no matter how beautiful in
colour it might be or what good points it had: it was to go as soon as
he could get rid of it; but if a piebald, he would rejoice, and if
there was anything remarkable in its colouring he would keep a sharp
eye on it, to find out later perhaps that he liked it too well to part
with it. Eventually, when broken, it would go into his private
_tropilla_, and in this way he would always possess three or four
times as many saddle-horses as he needed. If you met Gandara every day
for a week or two you would see him each time on a different horse,
and every one of them would be more or less a surprise to you on
account of its colouring.
There was something fantastic in this passion. It reminds one of the
famous eighteenth-century miller of Newhaven, described by Mark Antony
Lower in his book about the strange customs and quaint characters in
the Sussex of the old days. The miller used to pay weekly visits on
horseback to his customers in the neighbouring towns and villages, his
horse, originally a white one, having first been painted some
brilliant colour - blue, green, yellow, orange, purple, or scarlet. The
whole village would turn out to look at the miller's wonderful horse
and speculate as to the colour he would exhibit on his next
appearance. Gandara's horses were strangely coloured by nature aided
by artificial selection, and I remember that as a boy I thought them
very beautiful. Sometimes it was a black- or brown- or bay-and-white,
or a chestnut- or silver-grey- or strawberry-red-and-white, but the
main point was the pleasing arrangement and shading of the dark
colour. Some of his best selected specimens were iron- or blue-grey-
and-white; others, finer still, fawn-and-white and dun-and-white, and
the best of all, perhaps, white and a metallic tawny yellow, the
colour the natives call bronze or brassy, which I never see in
England.
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