There was certainly nothing suggestive of antiquity about Faquito’s appearance. His droll, brown face, his thickset boyish figure and the alarming tatters of his scant apparel were all undignified as his name—which had got to the most disrespectful distance possible from the stately Francisco of the baptismal font. There could be no worthier name for a boy of Peru than that worn by the great conquistador Pizarro. But it is hard to live up to the dignity of the christening, and Francisco degenerates into Francisquito, which is fond; and then to Franco, which is familiar; and finally to Faquito, which is positively rude. Probably it never occurred to the lad to be comforted with thinking that the greatest conqueror of the Americas was called Faquito, too, when he was herding his pigs in Truxillo; and that if one Faquo could grow up to be Don Francisco, so[26] might another. These consolations of philosophy never do come to us until we are too old to need them so much.