Chapter II.

The young lady we have been describing was called Ismena, and was the only child of Don Iago O'Donnell, whose family, in common with many others, had emigrated from Ireland in the time of William of Orange. After the capitulation of Limerick, the troops, who belonged to the most noble families of Ireland, entered the service of France and Spain. Philip the First, as was to have been expected, welcomed them, and they formed, in 1709, the regiments of Ibernia and Ultonia, and, later, a third called the Irlanda. These troops were commanded by James Stuart, duke of Berwick, natural son of James the Second by Arabella Churchill, sister of the famous Duke of Marlborough. The Duke of Berwick gained the battle of Almansa and took Barcelona by assault, and the king rewarded his great services with the dukedoms of Liria and Jerica, and made him a grandee of Spain. This gallant general had two sons, the elder was naturalized in Spain and inherited the titles of Berwick, Liria, and Jerica, to which he afterward united, by his marriage, that of the noble house of Alba, which had descended to a female. The second son established himself in France, where his descendants still exist and bear the title of dukes of Fitz-James.

The above-mentioned regiments are represented in our days by the descendants of the loyal men who composed them, for, as we have been informed, there are now ninety Irish surnames in the Spanish army, names which, for their traditional loyalty and bravery, and their hereditary nobility, honor those who bear them.

Don Iago O'Donnell married a Spanish lady, and his daughter, Ismena, united in her person the beauty of both types. Her slight and graceful Andalusian form was clothed in the white rose-tinted skin of the daughters of misty Erin, to which the impassible coldness of its possessor gave a transparent pearliness and purity that nothing ever disturbed. Her large violet eyes beamed from beneath their dark lashes with the haughty and expressive glance of the south. Her carriage, though somewhat lofty, was free and natural. Naturalness is, indeed, but another name for that "Spanish grace" which has been so justly famed and eulogized. The irresistible attraction which is born of it, and which, in former times, women shed around them as the flame sheds light and the flowers perfume, they owed to the men, who used to abhor whatever was put on, affected, or studied; anathematizing it in a masculine way under the expressive epithet "monadas." [Footnote 50] In naturalness there is truth, and without truth there is no perfection; in naturalness there is grace, and without grace there is no real elegance. Taste at present appears to lie in the opposite extreme, as if the Florentines should dress their _Venus di Medicis_ as a show figure.

[Footnote 50: Monkey airs, splashness.]

The spirit of Ismena was far less richly endowed than her person. She possessed the cold, calm temperament of her father united to the haughty and domineering disposition she had inherited from her mother, and these qualities were exaggerated in her by the overbearing pride of the rich, beautiful, and spoiled child. Her mind was ever occupied in framing for herself a future as illustrious and brilliant as those which fortune-tellers prognosticate, and so she rejected all the lovers who offered her their affections, not one of them appearing likely to realize her dreams of greatness. But changes of fortune, like the transformations in magic comedies, come unlooked for and suddenly. Ismena's father lost his whole fortune within a few months; thanks to the treachery of the English, who seized so many of our ships and so much treasure before making a formal declaration of war with Spain. {241} The fatal war which brought upon us the fatal family compact! Don Iago, who had just lost his wife, retired, ruined, to his country house in Chiclana. But this retreat did not long remain to him, for the house was advertised for sale by his creditors. The first person who presented himself as a purchaser was the General Count of Alcira. General Alcira had just returned from a long residence in America. Though he counted but fifty-five years, he appeared much older in consequence of the destructive action of that climate, which, with its hot miasms, impairs the European even as it corrodes iron. Notwithstanding his age, the general had become the heir of a young nephew, from whose title the rule of succession excluded females. On his return he went to Seville, his native city, where he was received by his sister-in-law (who looked upon him as one come to deprive her and her daughters of the riches and title they had possessed) with such bitterness and hostility that, although he was one of the most generous of men, he was justly indignant, and determined to leave Seville and establish himself in Cadiz, and he decided well.

At that period, Seville, the staid, religious matron, with rosary in hand, still more the buckram stays and the high powdered promontory--that, without the hair, must have been a weight in itself--and the hoops with which a lady could pass with ease only through a very wide door. At her austere entertainments she played Baciga or Ombre with her canons, her judges, her aldermen; and her cavaliers. She had no theatre, being withheld therefrom by a religious vow. She had for illumination only the pious lights that burned before her numerous pictures of saints. She had no pavements, no _Paseo de Cristiana_.

Of course there were no steamboats, those swift news-bearers which have since united in such close friendship these sister cities, the twin jewels of Andalusia, Cadiz, even more beautiful than she is now, wore her drapery in the low-necked Greek fashion which we still see in portraits of the beauties of those days. Cadiz, the seductive siren of naked bosom and silver scales, bathed in a sea of water, a sea of pleasure, and a sea of riches. She knew well how to unite the art and culture of foreign elegance with the dignity, ease, and spontaneity of Spanish grace, and, though the fair Andalusian had adopted certain things and forms that were foreign, she was none the less essentially Spanish in her delicate taste and circumspection, and her attachment to her own nationality.

For, strange to tell, in those days the pompous and high-sounding assumption of the "Spanish" which now fills the unholy sheets of the public press, and resounds through all discourses like hollow and incessant thunders, was unknown. It did not blare in lyric compositions, nor was it made the instrument of a party for the promotion of such or such ideas, nor was the bull Señorito [Footnote 51] chosen with enthusiasm as its symbol.

[Footnote 51: The famous bull that, in 1850, in Seville, fought and killed a large tiger.]

But that which was Spanish was had with simplicity, as the brave man has his intrepidity without proclaiming it, and as the fields have their flowers without parading them, Spanish patriotism was not upon the lips, but in the blood, in the being; it was the genius of the people; and it became them so well, was so refined and generous, so gentle and chivalric, so in harmony with the gracious southern type, that it came to be the admiration and delight of strangers. But we have apostatized from it, do not understand it, hold it in slight esteem, and, unlike the ass that covered himself with the rich golden skin of the lion, we, more stupid than he, instead of smoothing and cultivating that which nature has bestowed upon us, wrap ourselves in one that is inferior to it. {242} Then the most candid gayety blended with an exquisite refinement pervaded social intercourse. There were neither clubs nor casinos, only reunions, in which gallantry was governed by the code contained in these ancient verses of Suarez:

"You are feared and worshiped; You to be obeyed: We saw humble worshipers, Of your frowns afraid. You the lovely conquerors; We your bondsman true: Ladies dear in vanquishers, We are slaves to you. You the praised and honored; Fairest under sun: We the lowly servitors, By your smiles undone."

The expression "to acquire a manner" was not then in use, but the practice of good manners was a matter of course and of instinct. The officers of the marine, brave and gentlemanly as they are now, but richer and more gallant, constituted the chief ornament of the society of Cadiz. They had formed themselves into a gay fraternity, at the head of which were the officers of the man-of-war San Francisco de Paula, and which, in playful allusion to the motto of the saint of this name--Caritas bonitas--styled itself "La devota Hermandad de las Caritas Bonitas" [Footnote 52] (The devoted Brotherhood of Beauty). In the theatre the national pieces of our own poets were played, and the farces of Don Ramon de la Cruz were enthusiastically applauded: at the brilliant fairs of Chiclana the inhabitants of Cadiz and Puerto congregated like flocks of gorgeous birds; and Cadiz retained, long years after, charms sufficient to inspire the song of Byron, that discriminating appreciator of the beautiful.

[Footnote 52: Caritas bonitas, Pretty faces.]

The General Count of Alcira desiring to buy a country house, that of Don Iago O'Donnell was proposed to him, and be went to look at it. The unfortunate proprietor threw it open to his inspection as soon as he presented himself. The count was charmed with all that he saw in the elegant mansion we have already described, and, above all, with the daughter of its master, whom they encountered writing in a retired cabinet that received light and fragrance from the garden. She was dressed in deep mourning, and weeping bitterly while she answered letters from two of her friends who had just married--one an English lord, and the other a nobleman of Madrid. How bitterly those letters caused Ismena to feel the contrast between the lot of her friends and that which compelled her, single and poor, to abandon even this house, the only thing that remained to her of the brilliant past.

Her tears moved and interested the good general to such an extent that, having bought the house, he begged the occupant to remain in it and admit him, the buyer, as a member of his family and the husband of his daughter. It is hardly necessary to add that Don Iago received this proposition as a message of felicity, and that his daughter hailed it as a means of escaping lower depths of the abyss into which fortune had hurled her. To paint the rage of the aunt's sister-in-law when she heard of the projected alliance would be a difficult task. She spread calumnies upon Ismena, ridiculed the marriage, and spit out her venom in bitter sarcasms, prophesying that the union of the ambitious beggar with the worn-out valetudinarian would remain without issue; in short, that Providence would mock their calculations, and cause the title, for lack of a male inheritor, to return to her own family. The excessive pride of Ismena, more than ever susceptible since her misfortune, was stung beyond endurance by those gibes and revilings. And she was still more chagrined when, after having been married two years without giving birth to a child, she seemed to see the prophecies of her enemy realized. It appeared that God would deny the blessing of children to the wife who desired them not from the holy instinct of maternal love, but to satisfy a base pride and a contemptible covetousness; not for the blessed glory of seeing herself surrounded by her offspring, but from the haughty and miserable desire of humiliating a rival--of triumphing over an enemy. {243} It is at this time and under the influence of these feelings that we have introduced Ismena, Countess of Alcira, bathed in tears. And for this we say that these drops, so cold and bitter, were not tokens of wounded love, but of rage and spite.