SCENE III.—ISABEL’S _Garret_. ISABEL _and_ INES.

_Isab._ What noise is that on the stairs?

_Enter_ REBOLLEDO.

_Reb._ Sanctuary! Sanctuary!

_Isab._ Who are you, sir?

_Enter_ CAPTAIN.

_Capt._ Where is the rascal?

_Isab._ A moment, sir! This poor man has flown to our feet for protection; I appeal to you for it; and no man, and least of all an officer, will refuse that to any woman.

_Capt._ I swear no other arm than that of beauty, and beauty such as yours, could have withheld me. (_To_ REBOLLEDO.) You may thank the deity that has saved you, rascal.

_Isab._ And I thank you, sir.

_Capt._ And yet ungratefully slay me with your eyes in return for sparing him with my sword.

_Isab._ Oh, sir, do not mar the grace of a good deed by poor compliment, and so make me less mindful of the real thanks I owe you.

_Capt._ Wit and modesty kiss each other, as well they may, in that lovely face. (_Kneels._)

_Isab._ Heavens! my father!

_Enter_ CRESPO _and_ JUAN _with swords_.

_Cres._ How is this, sir? I am alarmed by cries of murder in my house—am told you have pursued a poor man up to my daughte room; and, when I get here expecting to find you killing a man, I find you courting a woman.

_Capt._ We are all born subjects to some dominion—soldiers especially to beauty. My sword, though justly raised against this man, as justly fell at this lad bidding.

_Cres._ No lady, sir, if you please; but a plain peasant girl—my daughter.

_Juan._ (_aside_). All a trick to get at her. My blood boils. (_Aloud to Captain._) I think, sir, you might have seen enough of my father’s desire to serve you to prevent your requiting him by such an affront as this.

_Cres._ And, pray, who bid thee meddle, boy? Affront! what affront? The soldier affronted his captain; and if the captain has spared him for thy siste sake, pray what hast thou to say against it?

_Capt._ I think, young man, you had best consider before you impute ill intention to an officer.

_Juan._ I know what I do know.

_Cres._ What! you will go on, will you?

_Capt._ It is out of regard for you I do not chastise him.

_Cres._ Wait a bit; if that were wanting, ’twould be from his father, not from you.

_Juan._ And wha more, I would endure it from any one but my father.

_Capt._ You would not?

_Juan._ No! death rather than such dishonour!

_Capt._ What, pray, is a clodpol idea of honour.

_Juan._ The same as a captain’s—no clodpole no captain, I can tell you.

_Capt._ ‘Fore Heaven, I must punish this insolence.

(_About to strike him._)

_Cres._ You must do it through me, then.

_Reb._ Eyes right!—Don Lope!

_Capt._ Don Lope!

_Enter_ DON LOPE.

_Lope._ How now? A riot the very first thing I find on joining the regiment? What is it all about?

_Capt._ (_aside_). Awkward enough!

_Cres._ (_aside_). By the lord, the boy would have held his own with the best of ‘em.

_Lope._ Well! No one answer me? ‘Fore God, I’ll pitch the whole house, men, women, and children, out of windows, if you do tell me at once. Here have I had to trail up your accursed stairs, and then no one will tell me what for.

_Cres._ Nothing, nothing at all, sir.

_Lope._ Nothing? that would be the worst excuse of all, but swords are drawn for nothing; come, the truth?

_Capt._ Well, the simple fact is this, Don Lope; I am quartered upon this house; and one of my soldiers——

_Lope._ Well, sir, go on.

_Capt._ Insulted me so grossly I was obliged to draw my sword on him. He ran up here, where it seems these two girls live; and I, not knowing there was any harm, after him; at which these men, their father or brother, or some such thing, take affront. This is the whole business.

_Lope._ I am just come in time then to settle it. First, who is the soldier that began it with an act of insubordination?

_Reb._ What, am I to pay the piper?

_Isab._ (_pointing to_ REBOLLEDO). This, sir, was the man who ran up first.

_Lope._ This? handcuff him!

_Reb._ Me! my lord?

_Capt._ (_aside to_ REBOLLEDO). Do blab, I’ll bear you harmless.

_Reb._ Oh, I dare say, after being marched off with my hands behind me like a coward. Noble commander, ’twas the captain’s own doing; he made me pretend a quarrel, that he might get up here to see the women.

_Cres._ I _had_ some cause for quarrel, you see.

_Lope._ Not enough to peril the peace of the town for. Halloa there! beat all to quarters on pain of death. And, to prevent further ill blood here, do you (_to the_ CAPTAIN) quarter yourself elsewhere till we march. I’ll stop here.

_Capt._ I shall of course obey you, sir.

_Cres._ (_to_ ISABEL). Get you in. (_Exeunt_ ISABEL _and_ INES.) I really ought to thank you heartily for coming just as you did, sir; else, have done for myself.

_Lope._ How so?

_Cres._ I should have killed this popinjay.

_Lope._ What, sir, a captain in his Majest service?

_Cres._ Aye, a general, if he insulted me.

_Lope._ I tell you, whoever lays his little finger on the humblest private in the regiment, I’ll hang him.

_Cres._ And I tell you, whoever points his little finger at my honour, I’ll cut him down before hanging.

_Lope._ Know you not, you are bound by your allegiance to submit.

_Cres._ To all cost of property, yes; but of honour, no, no, no! My goods and chattels, aye, and my life—are the kin; but my honour is my own sou, and that is—God Almight.

_Lope._ ‘Fore God, ther some truth in what you say.

_Cres._ ‘Fore God, there ought to be, for I’ve been some years saying it.

_Lope._ Well, well. I’ve come a long way, and this leg of mine, which I wish the devil who gave it would carry [_sic_] away with him! cries for rest.

_Cres._ And who prevents its taking some? the same devil I suppose who gave you your leg, gave me a bed, which I do want him to take away again, however, on which your leg may lie if it like.

_Lope._ But did the devil, when he was about it, make your bed as well as give it?

_Cres._ To be sure he did.

_Lope._ Then I’ll unmake it—Heaven knows weary enough.

_Cres._ Heaven rest you then.

_Lope._ (_aside_). Devil or saint alike he echoes me!

_Calderon de la Barca_ (1600-1681).

_Trans. Edward Fitzgerald._

_THE SIMPLE GROOMS._

“Look,” said Juanillo, “we have now arrived at the Puerta del Sol, one of the chief resorts in Madrid. This site of beautiful things, rightly called the Sol or Sun, is renowned not only in Madrid, but throughout the whole world.” Just then the cries and loud sobs of a lad made them turn to inquire the cause, and Onofre, asking a boy close by, was told it was a doctor’s groom who had gone out to sell a mule too slow for his master, who, on account of his large practice, required one with more go.

“Are there so many sick in Madrid?” asked Onofre; to which the boy replied: “He lives in a suburb of delicate people, who dress richly, lie a long time in bed, have all their windows shut to keep out the air, and if their chocolate is too sweet or too highly spiced, say it has done them harm, and then they send for the doctor, who, to feel the pulses and purses of all, needs a lively mule, and so he wanted to sell his slow one.”

The boy went on to relate how the groom soon found a buyer in the servant of a country doctor, just arrived on horseback between the panniers of bread, a trick worthy of the devil himself, since that they might not suspect Death was entering the gates of Madrid, he came cloaked with the chief support of life; for they say he was abandoning his last residence, since it had lost half its population during the one year of his stay, and was, therefore, coming to Madrid, where, on account of its size, he hoped his work would not be so noticeable. With this executione servant ... a bargain was struck, and the buyer allowed to try the mule, after entertaining and bribing the groom; whereupon he vanished down the street of Alcalá.

Onofre smiled at the youth’s humour, and approaching the blubbering groom, heard the crowd trying to advise and console him in various ways: to look in all the hostries, where the thief might have taken the mule to give it a feed; that his master would easily earn his value in four days; that it was no good crying over spilt milk, to all of which the groom wept loudly, the big tears running down his cheeks, which, as well as his nose, he wiped with his cape and shirt-sleeves. Onofre felt sorry for the poor fellow, but Juanillo, calling him, told him such things often happened market days, and he knew another case, which showed the astuteness of some thieves.

A groom went, like this one, to sell a mule, which was, however, so young and wild, his master could not ride it. He arrived at the market and straightway found a buyer, for those simple fellows always come across crafty rogues, up to all kinds of tricks. They quickly came to terms, and the thief asked the lad to come for his money astride his mule to a surgeon-barber, for whom it was purchased. He then lead him to a shop where he had been shaved once or twice, and, leaving him outside on the mule, inquired for the master, and after the customary salutations, told him he had brought a sick groom whom he wished to be examined, and cured if possible, but that, as he was very shy and embarrassed, and had put off coming to a doctor for a long time, he must try not to frighten him, and ask the lad to wait a while inside till he could see him, lest he should run away. He then paid half the fee and said he would pay the rest afterwards. The barber, highly pleased, went out and asked the groom to come in and wait, and his business would soon be despatched.

“You know my business?” said the lad.

“Certainly,” said the barber.

The cheat, telling the groom that the barber would give him a dozen reals for himself beside the price for the mule, mounted, clapped spurs to the mule, and made off.

The groom, after waiting some little time, found out the fraud as soon as the barber began questioning him as to his health, and set up a great hullabaloo, whereupon the police hastened by, but could only warn him to be more prudent next time, with the hope that God would console him meanwhile.

“_Day and Night in Madrid._” _Santos_ (_fl._ 1697).

_PORTUGUESE EPITAPHS AND SAYINGS._

A noble Portuguee lies here, By name Don Vasco Cid Figuere, Not in bloodshed Died he, he fled From wars and Moors, and did all he could To die in bed as a gentleman should.

* * * * *

Here lies who once lived and is now dead, and although he died, he lives, for the world trembles at the sound of his name.

* * * * *

Here lies the body of Senhor Vasco Barreto, He died by God’s will and much against his own. Breathe an _Ave Maria_ for the repose of his soul.

* * * * *

Here lies Alfonso Galego. He died for the glory of God in spite of the Devil.

* * * * *

A Portuguese preacher once said: “The Moors are our neighbours, and the Jews are our neighbours, and even the Castilians are also our neighbours.”

Another time a Portuguese friar, preaching on the anniversary of a great battle, said: “The Christians were on one side of the river, and the Castilians on the other.”

(_Seventeenth Century_).

_LA TARASCA AND THE CARRIERS._

A town in Spain on the banks of the Tagus, just about to celebrate Corpus Christi, sent to a neighbouring town for the giants and the huge serpent, called La Tarasca. On the eve of the festival the bearers, in order to arrive in good time to join the procession, set out at dusk, with the intention of reaching their destination at break of day. They were inside the huge effigies, which were borne on their shoulders exactly as when they dance through the streets. The moon rose during their journey and shone down on the strange figures, to the great amazement and alarm of some carriers with loads of wine, who, becoming aware of the serpent and the giants behind, only screwed together enough courage to take to their heels as fast as they could. The bearers cried after them to come back and look after their teams, but in vain, the more they shouted, the faster they fled. Thereupon the porters of La Tarasca set her down and repaired to the mules, and when they perceived the sweet spoils they had won without any bloodshed, called to the bearers of the giants, and they all drank to each other’s health in such long draughts and hearty quaffs, that the liquor rose to their heads and laid them full length on the road.

The carriers, who were great braggarts, returned home and told their Alcalde how they had encountered such giant thieves; and the whole township, armed with cross-bows, lances and cudgels, sallied out in quest of these odd fish. They arrived at the spot, making so great a din, they almost awakened their foes, whom they found stretched on the ground.

The Alcalde, much amused at the jest, gave judgment that the carriers were to pay with wine those who had come to their help; upon which all drank to their hear content till the citizens and soldiers returned homewards and the porters again shouldered their burdens.

“_Truth on the Rack._” _Santos_ (_fl._ 1697).

_PEDIGREE OF FOOLS._

They say Lost Time married Ignorance, and had a son called I Thought, who married Youth, and had the following children: I Did Know, I Did Think, Who Would Have Expected.

Who Would Have Expected married Heedlessness, and had for children I All Right, To-morrow Will Do, Ther Plenty of Time, Next Opportunity.

Ther Plenty of Time married Doña I Did Think, and had for family I Forgot, I Know All About It, Nobody Can Deceive Me.

I Know All About It espoused Vanity, and begat Pleasure, who, marrying Tha Not Likely, became father to Let Us Enjoy Ourselves and Bad Luck.

Bad Luck took to wife Little Sense, and had a very large family, among whom were This Will Do, What Business Is It Of Theirs, It Seems To Me, I Not Possible.

Pleasure was widowed, and, marrying again, espoused Folly. Consuming their inheritance, they said one to the other, “Have Patience, let us spend our capital and enjoy ourselves this year, for God will provide for the next.” But Deception took them to prison, and Poverty to the workhouse, where they died.

Strange obsequies were performed at their funeral, at which were present the five Senses, Intellect, Memory, and Will, although in a pitiful condition. Repentance, who came somewhat late, found no seat, and had to stand the whole time, while Consolation and Contentment were represented by Desolation and Melancholy, daughters of Memory.

Despair, grandchild of the deceased, went about begging for several days, in which he could only collect six maravedies, with which he bought a rope and hanged himself from a turret, which is the end of the family of Fools.

_Anon._ (_Seventeenth Century_).

_THE FAMOUS PREACHER, FRIAR BLAS._

He was in the full perfection of his strength, just about three-and-thirty years old, tall, robust, and stout; his limbs well set and well proportioned; manly in gait, inclining to corpulence, with an erect carriage of his head, and the circle of hair round his tonsure studiously and exactly combed and shaven. His clerical dress was always neat, and fell round his person in ample and regular folds. His shoes fitted him with the greatest nicety, and, above all, his silken cap was adorned with much curious embroidery and a fanciful tassel—the work of certain female devotees who were dying with admiration of their favourite preacher. In short, he had a very youthful, gallant look; and, adding to this a clear, rich voice, a slight fashionable lisp, a peculiar grace in telling a story, a talent at mimicry, an easy action, a taking manner, a high-sounding style, and not a little effrontery—never forgetting to sprinkle jests, proverbs, and homely phrases along his discourses with a most agreeable aptness—he won golden opinions in his public discourses, and carried everything before him in the drawing-rooms he frequented.

It was well known that he always began his sermons with some proverb, some jest, some pothouse witticism, or some strange fragment, which, taken from its proper connections and relations, would seem, at first blush, to be an inconsequence, a blasphemy, or an impiety; until at last, having kept his audience waiting a moment in wonder, he finished the clause, or came out with an explanation which reduced the whole to a sort of miserable trifling. Thus, preaching one day on the mystery of the Trinity, he began his sermon by saying, “I deny that God exists a Unity in essence and a Trinity in person,” and then stopped short for an instant. The hearers, of course, looked round on one another scandalised, or, at least, wondering what would be the end of this heretical blasphemy. At length, when the preacher thought he had fairly caught them, he went on, “Thus says the Ebionite, the Marcionite, the Arian, the Manichean, the Socinian; but I prove it against them all from the Scriptures, the Councils, and the Fathers.”

In another sermon, which was on the Incarnation, he began by crying out, “Your health, cavaliers!” and, as the audience burst into a broad laugh at the free manner in which he had said it, he went on, “This is no joking matter, however; for it was for your health and for mine, and for that of all men, that Christ descended from heaven and became incarnate in the Virgin Mary. It is an article of faith, and I prove it thus: ‘_Propter nos, homines et nostram salutem decendit de cœlo et incarnatus est_,’”—whereat they all remained in delighted astonishment, and such a murmur of applause ran round the church that it wanted little of breaking out into open acclamation.

_Trans. Ticknor._

_THE MUSICAL ASS._

The fable which I now present Occur to me by accident; And whether bad or excellent, Is merely so by accident.

A stupid Ass this morning went Into a field by accident And crop his food and was content, Until he spied by accident A flute, which some oblivious gent Had left behind by accident; When, sniffing it with eager scent, He breathed on it by accident, And made the hollow instrument Emit a sound by accident. “Hurrah, hurrah!” exclaimed the brute, “How cleverly I play the flute!”

A fool, in spite of nature’s bent, May shine for once—by accident.

_Yriarte_ (1750-1791). _Trans. R. Rockliff._

_THE BASHFUL SHEPHERDESS._

No shady fruit-tree In the early year Dec with blossoms sweet In the day dawn clear So gladdens my eyes, And raises my heart, As when I catch sight Of my own sweetheart. He says, if I like, In the fair springtime We will married be, For his love I see. But to tell him yes I feel such shame, And no to answer Gives still more pain. But a thousand times yes, The very first time That he asks again, Is the answer mine.

_Iglesias_ (_d._ 1791).

_THE BEAR, THE APE, AND THE PIG._

A bear, whose dancing hel to gain His own and owne livelihood, And whose success had made him vain As any petit-maitre, stood Upon his hinder legs to try The figure of a new quadrille, When, seeing that an Ape was nigh, He stump’d about with all his skill, And, “Tell me how you like,” he cried, “My dancing, for always glad To hear the truth.” The Ape replied, “I really think it very bad.” “’Tis plain enough,” rejoin’d the Bear, “That envy makes you censure so; For have I not a graceful air, A slender shape and limber toe?” But here a tasteless Pig began To grunt applause, and said, “I vow I’ve never met, in brute or man, With one who danced so well as thou.” The bear, on hearing this, became Sedate and pensive for awhile; And then, as if abash’d with shame. Replied, in a more humble style: “The agile Ape’s rebuke might be Inspired by jealousy or spleen; But, since the Pig commends, I see How bad my dancing must have been.”

Let every author think on this, And hold the maxim for a rule— The worst that can befall him is The approbation of a fool.

_Yriarte_ (1750-1791). _Trans. R. Rockliff._

_THE FROG AND THE HEN._

As once a Frog, Who all day long had chatte from his bog, Began to close His mouth and eyes, and drop into a dose, He chanced just then To hear the sudden cackle of a hen. “What sound is this?” He cried. “Dear madam, what can be amiss, That thus you scream, And keep a quiet neighbour from his dream?” The Hen replied, Her feathers fluttering with maternal pride, “I humbly beg Your pardon, sir; but, having laid an egg, I could not chuse To let you sleep in ignorance of the news.” “What! all this clatter About a single egg!—so small a matter!” “True, neighbour, true; ’Tis but a single egg—a small one, too; But if you blame The rout that I have made about the same, ’Tis doubly wrong In you to croak for nothing all day long. The egg’s of use, And therefore I may brag with some excuse; But the dull brute Tha unproductive should be also mute.”

_Yriarte._ _Trans. R. Rockliff._

_MARIQUITA THE BALD._

(A TALE AFTER THE STYLE OF AN OLD CHRONICLE.)

It is as sorry a matter to use the words of which one ignores the meaning as it is a blemish for a man of sense to speak of what he knows nothing about. I say this to those of you who may have the present story in your hands, however often you may have happened to have heard _Mariquita the Bald_ mentioned, and I swear by my doublet that you shall soon know who Mariquita the Bald was, as well as I know who ate the Christmas turkey, setting aside the surmise that it certainly must have been a mouth.

I desire, therefore, to enlighten your ignorance of this subject, and beg to inform you that the said noted Maria (Mariquita is a diminutive of Maria) was born in the District of Segovia, and in the town of Sant Garcia, the which town is famed for the beauty of the maidens reared within its walls, who for the most part have such gentle and lovely faces, that may I behold such around me at the hour of my death. Mari father was an honest farmer, by name Juan Lanas, a Christian old man, and much beloved, and who had inherited no mean estate from his forefathers, though with but little wit in his crown, a lack which was the cause of much calamity to both the father and the daughter, for in the times to which we have attained, God forgive me if it is not necessary to have more of the knave than of the fool in on composition. Now it came to pass that Juan Lanas, for the castigation of his sins, must needs commit himself to a lawsuit with one of his neighbours about a vine stock which was worth about fifty maravedis; and Juan was in the right, and the judges gave the verdict in his favour, so that he won his case, excepting that the suit lasted no less than ten years and the costs amounted to nothing less than fifty thousand maravedies, not to speak of a disease of the eyes which after all was over left him blind. When he found himself with diminished property and without his eyesight, in sorrow and disgust he turned into money such part of his patrimony as sufficed to rid him of the hungry herd of scribeners and lawyers, and took his way to Toledo with his daughter, who was already entering upon her sixteenth year, and had matured into one of the most beautiful, graceful, and lovable damsels to be found throughout all Castile and the kingdoms beyond. For she was white as the lily and red like the rose, straight and tall of stature, and slender in the waist, with fair, shapely hips; and again her foot and hand were plump and small to a marvel, and she possessed a head of hair which reached to her knees. For I knew the widow Sarmiento who was their housekeeper, and she told me how she could scarcely clasp Mariquita’s hair with both hands, and that she could not comb the hair unless Maria stood up and the housekeeper mounted on a footstool, for if Maria sat down, the long tresses swept the ground, and therefore became all entangled.

And do not imagine her beauty and grace being such that she sinned greatly in pride and levity, as is the wont of girls in this age. She was as humble as a cloistered lay-sister, and as silent as if she were not a woman, and patient as the sucking lamb, and industrious as the ant, clean as the ermine, and pure as a saint of those times in which, by the grace of the Most High, saintly women were born into the world. But I must confide to you in friendship that our Mariquita was not a little vain about her hair, and loved to display it, and for this reason, now in the streets, now when on a visit, now when at mass, it is said she used to subtilely loosen her mantilla so that her tresses streamed down her back, the while feigning forgetfulness and carelessness. She never wore a hood, for she said it annoyed her and choked her; and every time that her father reproached her for some deed deserving of punishment and threatened to cut off her hair, I warrant you she suffered three times more than after a lash from the whip, and would then be good for three weeks successively; so much so that Juan Lanas, perceiving her amendment, would laugh under his cloak, and when saying his say to his gossips would tell them that his daughter, like the other saint of Sicily, would reach heaven by her hair. Having read so far, you must now know that Juan Lanas, the blind man, with the change of district and dwelling did not change his judgment, and if he was crack-brained at Sant Garcia, he remained crack-brained at Toledo, consuming in this resort his monies upon worthless drugs and quacks which did not cure his blindness and impoverished him more and more every day, so that if his daughter had not been so dexterous with her fingers in making and broidering garments of linen, wool, and silk, I promise you that this miserable Juan would have to have gone for more than four Sundays without a clean shirt to put on or a mouthful to eat, unless he had begged for it from door to door. The years passed by to find Maria every day more beautiful, and her father every day more blind and more desirous to see, until his affliction and trouble took such forcible possession of his breast and mind, that Maria saw as clear as daylight that if her father did not recover his sight, he would die of grief. Maria thereupon straightway took her father and led him to the house of an Arabian physician of great learning who dwelt at Toledo, and told the Moor to see if there were any cure for the old ma sight. The Arabian examined and touched Juan, and made this and that experiment with him, and everything was concerted in that the physician swore great oaths by the heel-bone of Mohammed that there was a complete certainty of curing Juan and making him to see his daughter again, if only he, the physician, were paid for the cure with five hundred maravedies all in gold. A sad termination for such a welcome beginning, for the two unhappy creatures, Juan and Maria, had neither maravedi nor cuarto in their money box! So they went thence all downcast, and Maria never ceased praying to his Holiness Saint John and his Holiness Saint James (the patron saint of Spain) to repair to their assistance in this sad predicament.

“In what way,” conjectured she inwardly—“in what way can I raise fifty maravedies to be quits with the worthy Moor who will give back his sight to my poor old father? Ah! I have it. I am a pretty maid, and suitors innumerable, commoners and nobles, pay their addresses and compliments to me. But all are trifling youths who only care for love-making and who seek light o’ loves rather than spouses according to the law of the Lord Jesus Christ. I remember, notwithstanding, that opposite our house lives the sword-cutler, Master Palomo, who is always looking at me and never speaks to me, and the Virgin assist me, he appears a man of very good condition for a husband; but what maiden, unless she were cross-eyed or hunch-backed, could like a man with such a flat nose, with that skin the colour of a ripe date, with those eyes like a dead cal, and with those huge hands, which are more like the paws of a wild beast than the belongings of a person who with them should softly caress the woman whom Destiny bestows upon him for a companion? ’Tis said that he is no drunkard, nor cudgeller, nor dallier with woman, nor a liar, and that he is besides possessed of much property and very rich. Pity ’tis that one who is so ugly and stiff-necked should unite such parts.”

Thus turning the matter over and over in her mind, Maria together with Juan reached their home, where was awaiting them an esquire in a long mourning robe, who told Maria that the aunt of the Mayor of the city had died in an honest estate and in the flower of her age, for she had not yet completed her seventy years, and that the obsequies of this sexagenarian damsel were to be performed the following day, on which occasion her coffin would be carried to the church by maidens, and he was come to ask Maria if she would please to be one of the bearers of the dead woman, for which she would receive a white robe, and to eat, and a ducat, and thanks into the bargain.

Maria, since she was a well brought up maid, replied that if it seemed well to her father, it would also seem well to her.

Juan accepted, and Maria was rejoiced to be able to make a display of her hair, for it is well known that the maidens who bear another to the grave walk with dishevelled locks. And when on the morrow the tiring-women of the Mayoress arrayed Maria in a robe white as the driven snow and fine as the skin of an onion; and when they girt her slender waist with a sash of crimson silk, the ends of which hung down to the broad hem of the skirt; and when they crowned her smooth and white forehead with a wreath of white flowers, I warrant you that, what with the robe and the sash and the wreath, and the beautiful streaming hair and her lovely countenance and gracious mien, she seemed no female formed of flesh and blood, but a superhuman creature or blessed resident of those shining circles in which dwell the celestial hierarchies. The Mayor and the other mourners stepped forth to see her, and all unceasingly praised God, who was pleased to perform such miracles for the consolation and solace of those living in this world. And there in a corner of the hall, motionless like a heap of broken stones, stood one of the mutes with the hood of his long cloak covering his head, so that nothing could be seen but his eyes, the which he kept fixed on the fair damsel. The latter modestly lowered her eyes to the ground with her head a little bent and her cheeks red for bashfulness, although it pleased her no little to hear the praises of her beauty. At this moment a screen was pushed aside, and there began to appear a huge bulk of petticoats, which was nothing less than the person of the Mayoress, for she was with child and drawing near to her time. And when she saw Maria, she started, opened her eyes a hand’s-breadth wide, bit her lips, and called hurriedly for her husband. They stepped aside for a good while, and then hied them thence, and when they returned the mutes and maidens had all gone.

While they are burying the defunct lady I must tell you, curious readers, that the Mayor and Mayoress had been married for many years without having any children, and they longed for them like the countryman for rain in the month of May, and at last her hour of bliss came to the Mayoress, to the great content of her husband. Now, it was whispered that the said lady had always been somewhat capricious; judge for yourselves what she would be now in the time of her pregnancy! And as she was already on the way to fifty, she was more than mediocrely bald and hairless, and on these very same days had commissioned a woman barber, who lived in the odour of witchcraft, to prepare for her some false hair, but it was not to be that of a dead woman, for the Mayoress said very sensibly that if the hair belonged to a dead woman who rejoiced in supreme glory, or was suffering for her sins in purgatory, it would be profanation to wear any pledge of theirs, and if they were in hell, it was a terrible thing to wear on person relics of one of the damned. And when the Mayoress saw the abundant locks of Maria, she coveted them for herself, and it was for this reason that she called to the Mayor to speak to her in private and besought him eagerly to persuade Maria to allow herself to be shorn upon the return from the burial.

“I warn you,” said the Mayor, “that you are desirous of entering upon a very knotty bargain, for the dishevelled girl idolises her hair in such wise, that she would sooner lose a finger than suffer one of her tresses to be cut off.”

“I warn you,” replied the Mayoress, “that if on this very day the head of this young girl is not shorn smooth beneath my hand as a melon, the child to which I am about to give birth will have a head of hair on its face, and if it happens to be a female, look you, a pretty daughter is in store for you!”

“But bethink yourself that Maria will ask, who knows, a good few crowns for this shaving.”

“Bethink yourself, that if not, your heir or heiress, begotten after so many years’ marriage, will come amiss; and bear in mind, by the way, that we are not so young as to hope to replace this by another.”

Upon this she turned her back to the Mayor, and went to her apartment crying out: “I want the hair, I must have the hair, and if I do not get the hair, by my halidom I shall never become a mother.”

In the meantime the funeral had taken place without any novelty to mention, excepting that if in the streets any loose fellow in the crowd assayed to annoy the fair Maria, the hooded mute, of whom we made mention before, quickly drew from beneath his cloak a strap, with which he gave a lash to the insolent rogue without addressing one word to him, and then walked straight on as if nothing had happened. When all the mourners returned, the Mayor seized hold of Mari hand and said to her—

“And now, fair maid, let us withdraw for a little while into this other apartment,” and thus talking whilst in motion he brought her into his wife’s private tiring-room, and sat himself down in a chair and bent his head and stroked his beard with the mien of one who is studying what beginning to give to his speech. Maria, a little foolish and confused, remained standing in front of the Mayor, and she also humbly lowered before him her eyes, black as the sloe; and to occupy herself with something, gently fingered the ends of the sash which girded her waist and hung down over her skirt, not knowing what to expect from the grave mien and long silence of the Mayor, who, raising his eyes and looking up at Maria, when he beheld her in so modest a posture, devised thence a motive with which to begin, saying—

“Forsooth, Maria, so modest and sanctimonious is thy bearing, that it is easy to see thou art preparing thyself to become a black wimpled nun. And if it be so, as I presume it to be, I now offer of my own accord to dispose of thy entry into the cloisters without any dowry, on condition that thou dost give me something that thou hast on thy head, and which then wilt not be necessary for thee.”

“Nay, beshrew me, Sir Mayor,” replied Maria, “for I durst not think that the Lord calls upon me to take that step, for then my poor father would remain in the world without the staff of his old age.”

“Then, now, I desire to give thee some wise counsel, maid Maria. Thou dost gain thy bread with great fatigue, thou shouldst make use of thy time as much as is possible. Now one of thy neighbours hath told me, that in the dressing of thy hair, thou doth waste every day more than an hour. It would be better far if thou didst spend this hour on thy work rather than in the dressing and braiding which thou dost to thy hair.”

“That is true, Sir Mayor,” replied Maria, turning as red as a carnation, “but, look you, it is not my fault if I have a wealth of tresses, the combing and plaiting of which necessitates so long a time every morning.”

“I tell thee it is thy fault,” retorted the Mayor, “for if thou didst cut off this mane, thou would save thyself all this combing and plaiting, and thus would have more time for work, and so gain more money, and would also give no occasion to people to call thee vain. They even say that the Devil will some day carry thee off by thy hair. Nay, do not be distressed, for I already perceive the tears gathering in thy eyes, for thou hast them indeed very ready at hand; I admonish thee for thine own good without any self-interest. Cut thy hair off, shear thyself, shave thyself, good Maria, and to allay the bitterness of the shearing, I will give fifty maravedies, always on condition that thou dost hand me over the hair.”

When Maria at first heard this offer of so reasonable a sum for this her hair, it seemed to her a jest of the Mayo, and she smiled right sweetly while she dried her tears, repeating—

“You will give me fifty maravedies if I shave myself?”

Now it appeared to the Mayor (who, it is said, was not gifted with all the prudence of Ulysses) that that smile signified that the maid was not satisfied with so small a price, and he added—

“If thou wilt not be content with fifty maravedies, I will give thee a hundred.”

Then Maria saw some hangings of the apartment moving in front of her, and perceiving a bulky protuberance, she immediately divined that the Mayoress was hiding behind there, and that the protuberance was caused by her portly form. She now discovered the Mayo design, and that it was probably a caprice of his spouse, and she made a vow not to suffer herself to be shorn unless she acquired by these means the five hundred maravedies needful to pay the Arabian physician who would give her father back his eyesight.

Then the Mayor raised his price from a hundred maravedies to a hundred and fifty, and afterwards to two hundred, and Maria continued her sweet smiling, shaking of the head and gestures, and every time that the Mayor bid higher and Maria feigned to be reluctant, she almost hoped that the Mayor would withdraw from his proposition, for the great grief it caused her to despoil herself of that precious ornament, notwithstanding that by means of it she might gain her father’s health. Finally the Mayor, anxious to conclude the treaty, for he saw the stirring of the curtains, and knew by them the anxiety and state of mind of the listener, closed by saying—

“Go to, hussy, I will give thee five hundred maravedies, see, once and for all, if thou canst agree to these terms.”

“Be it so,” replied Maria, sighing as if her soul would flee from her flesh with these words—“be it so, so long that nobody doth know that I remain bald.”

“I will give my word for it,” said the Mayoress, stepping from behind the curtains with a pair of sharp shears in her hands and a wrapper over her arm.

When Maria saw the scissors she turned as yellow as wax, and when they told her to sit down on the sacrificial chair, she felt herself grow faint and had to ask for a drink of water; and when they tied the wrapper round her throat it is related that she would have immediately torn it asunder if her courage had not failed her. And when at the first movement of the shears she felt the cold iron against her skull, I tell you it seemed to her as if they were piercing her heart with a bright dagger. It is possible that she did not keep her head still for a moment while this tonsuring was taking place; she moved it in spite of herself, now to one side, now to another, to flee from the clipping scissors, of which the rude cuts and the creaking axis wounded her ears. Her posture and movements, however, were of no avail to the poor shorn maiden, and the pertinacious shearer, with the anxiety and covetousness of a pregnant woman satisfying a caprice, seized the hair well, or ill, by handfuls, and went on bravely clipping, and the locks fell on to the white wrapper, slipping down thence till they reached the ground.

At last the business came to an end, and the Mayoress, who was beside herself with joy, caressingly passed the palm of her hand again and again over the mai bald head from the front to the back, saying—

“By my mother’s soul, I have shorn you so regularly and close to root, that the most skilful barber could not have shorn you better. Get up and braid the hair while my husband goes to get the money and I your clothes, so that you can leave the house without any one perceiving it.”

The Mayor and Mayoress went out of the room, and Maria, as soon as she found herself alone, went to look at herself in a mirror that hung there; and when she saw herself bald she lost the patience she had had until then, and groaned with rage and struck herself, and even tried to wrench off her ears, which appeared to her now outrageously large, although they were not so in reality. She stamped upon her hair and cursed herself for having ever consented to lose it, without remembering her father, and just as if she had no father at all. But as it is a quality of human nature to accept what cannot be altered, poor angry Maria calmed down little by little, and she picked up the hair from the ground and bound it together and braided it into great ropes, not without kissing it and lamenting over it many times. The Mayor and the Mayoress returned, he with the money and she with the every-day clothes of Maria, who undressed and folded her white robe in a kerchief, put on her old gown, hid herself with her shawl to the eyes, and walked, moaning, to the house of the Moor, without noticing that the man with the hood over his head was following behind her, and that when she, in a moment of forgetfulness, lowered her shawl through the habit she had of displaying her tresses, her bald head could be plainly seen. The Moor received the five hundred maravedies with that good will with which money is always received, and told Maria to bring Juan Lanas to his house to stay there so long as there was any risk in the cure. Maria went to fetch the old man, and kept silence as to her shorn head so as not to grieve him, and whilst Juan remained the physicia guest, Maria durst not leave her home except after nightfall and then well enveloped; this, however, did not hinder her being followed by the muffled-up man.

One evening the Moor told her in secret that the next morning he would remove the bandages from Jua eyes. Maria went to bed that night with great rejoicing, but thought to herself that when her father saw her (which would be with no little pleasure) he would be pleased three or four times more if he could see her with the pretty head-dress which she used to wear in her native town. Amidst such cavillation she donned the next day her best petticoat and ribands to hie to the Arabia house; and while she was sitting down to shoe herself she of a sudden felt something like a hood closing over her head, and, turning round, she saw behind her the muffled-up man of before, who, throwing aside his cloak, discovered himself to be the sword-cutler, Master Palomo, who, without speaking, presented Maria with a little Venetian mirror, in which she looked and saw herself with her own hair and garb in such wise that she wondered for a good time if it were not a dream that the Mayoress had shorn her. The fact was, that Master Palomo was a great crony of the old woman barber, and had seen in her house Mari tresses on the very same afternoon of the morning in which he saw Maria was bald, and keeping silence upon the matter, had wheedled the old woman into keeping Mari hair for him, and dressing for the Mayoress some other hair of the same hue which the crone had from a dead woman—a bargain by which the crafty old dame acquired many a bright crown. And the story relates that as soon as Maria regained her much-lamented and sighed-for hair by the hands of the gallant sword-cutler, the Master appeared to her much less ugly than before, and I do not know if it tells that from that moment she began to look on him with more favourable eyes, but i’sooth it is a fact that upon his asking her to accept his escort to the Moor’s house, she gave her assent, and the two set out hand in hand, the maiden holding her head up free from mufflers. As they both entered the physicia apartment her father threw himself into Mari arms, crying—

“Glory to God, I see thee now, my beloved daughter. How tall and beautiful thou art grown! Verily, it is worthwhile to become blind for five years to see on daughter matured thus! Now that I see daylight again, it is only right that I should no longer be a burden to thee. I shall work for myself, for as for thee it is already time for thee to marry.”

“For this very purpose am I come,” broke in at this opportune moment the silent sword-cutler; “I, as you will have already recognised by my voice, am your neighbour, Master Palomo. I love Maria, and ask you for her hand.”

“Lack-a-day, Master, but your exterior is not very prepossessing. Howbeit, if Maria doth accept you, I am content.”

“I,” replied Maria, wholly abashed, and smoothing the false hair (which then weighed upon her head and heart like a burden of five hundred weight)—“I, so may God enlighten me, for I durst not venture to reply.”

Palomo took her right hand without saying anything, and as he did so Maria looked at the Master’s wrists, and observed the wristbands of his shirt, neatly embroidered, and with some suspicion and beating of her heart said to him—

“If you wish to please me, good neighbour, tell me by what sempstress is this work?”

“It is the work,” replied the Master, jocularly—“the work of a pretty maiden who for five years has toiled for my person, albeit she hath not known it till now.”

“Now I perceive,” said Maria, “how that all the women who have come to give me linen to sew and embroider were sent by you, and that is why they paid me more than is customary.”

The Master did not reply, but he smiled and held out his arms to Maria. Maria threw herself into them, embracing him very caressingly; and Juan himself said to the two—

“In good sooth, you are made one for the other.”

“By my troth, my beloved one,” continued the sword-cutler after a while, “if my countenance had only been more pleasing, I should not have been silent towards you for so many long days, nor would I have been content with gazing at you from afar. I should have spoken to you, you would have made me the confidant of your troubles, and I would have given you the five hundred maravedies for the cure of your good father.” And whispering softly into her ear, he added, “And then you would not have passed that evil moment under the hands of the Mayoress. But if you fear that she may break the promise she made to you to keep silence as to your cropped head, let us, if it please you, set out for Seville, where nobody knows you, and thus——”

“No more,” exclaimed Maria, resolutely throwing on the ground the hair, which Juan picked up all astonished; “Send this hair to the Mayoress, since it was for this and not for that of the dead woman that she paid so dearly. For I, to cure myself of my vanity, now make a vow, with your good permission, to go shorn all my life; such artificial adornments are little befitting to the wives of honest burghers.”

“But rely upon it,” replied the Master-cutler, “that as soon as it is known that you have no hair, the girls of the city, envious of your beauty, will give you the nickname of _Mariquita the Bald_!”

“They may do so,” replied Maria, “and that they may see that I do not care a fig for this or any other nickname, I swear to you that from this day forth I will not suffer anybody to call me by another name than _Mariquita the Bald_.”

This was the event that rendered so famous throughout all Castille the beautiful daughter of good Juan Lanas, who in effect married Master Palomo, and became one of the most honourable and prolific women of the most illustrious city of Toledo.

_Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch_ (1806-1880).

_PULPETE AND BALBEJA; OR, AN ANDALUSIAN DUEL._

Through the little square of St. Anna, towards a certain tavern, where the best wine is to be quaffed in Seville, there walked in measured steps two men, whose demeanour clearly manifested the soil which gave them birth. He who walked in the middle of the street, taller than the other by about a finger’s length, sported with affected carelessness the wide, slouched hat of Ecija, with tassels of glass beads and a ribbon as black as his sins. He wore his cloak gathered under his left arm; the right, emerging from a turquoise lining, exposed the merino lambskin with silver clasps. The herdsman’s boots—white, with Turkish buttons,—the breeches gleaming red from below the cloak and covering the knee, and, above all, his strong and robust appearance, dark curly hair, and eye like a red-hot coal, proclaimed at a distance that all this combination belonged to one of those men who put an end to horses between their knees and tire out the bull with their lance. He walked on, arguing with his companion, who was rather spare than prodigal in his person, but marvellously lithe and supple. The latter was shod with low shoes, garters united the stockings to the light-blue breeches, the waistcoat was cane-coloured, his sash light green, and jaunty shoulder-knots, lappets, and rows of buttons ornamented the camelite jacket. The open cloak, the hat drawn over his ear, his short, clean steps, and the manifestations in all his limbs and movements of agility and elasticity beyond trial plainly showed that in the arena, carmine cloth in hand, he would mock at the most frenzied of Jarama bulls, or the best horned beasts from Utrera.

I—who adore and die for such people, though the compliment be not returned—went slowly in the wake of their worships, and, unable to restrain myself, entered with them the same tavern, or rather eating-house, since there they serve certain provocatives as well as wine, and I, as my readers perceive, love to call things by their right name. I entered and sat down at once, and in such a manner as not to interrupt my Oliver and Roland, and that they might not notice me, when I saw that, as if believing themselves alone, they threw their arms with an amicable gesture round each other’s neck, and thus began their discourse:—

“Pulpete,” said the taller, “now that we are going to meet each other, knife in hand—you here, I there,... _one, two,... on your guard,... triz, traz,... have that,... take this and call it what you like_ ...—let us first drain a tankard to the music and measure of some songs.”

“Señor Balbeja,” replied Pulpete, drawing his face aside and spitting with the greatest neatness and pulchritude towards his shoe, “I am not the kind of man either for la Gorja or other similar earthly matters, or because a steel tongue is sheathed in my body, or my weasand slit, or for any other such trifle, to be provoked or vexed with such a friend as Balbeja. Let the wine be brought, and then we will sing; and afterwards blood—blood to the hilt.”

The order was given, they clinked glasses, and, looking one at the other, sang a Sevillian song.

This done, they threw off their cloaks with an easy grace, and unsheathed their knives with which to prick one another, the one Flemish with a white haft, the other from Guadix, with a guard to the hilt, both blades dazzling in their brightness, and sharpened and ground enough for operating upon cataracts, much less ripping up bellies and bowels. The two had already cleft the air several times with the said lancets, their cloak wound round their left arm—first drawing closer, then back, now more boldly and in bounds—when Pulpete hoisted the flag for parley, and said—

“Balbeja, my friend, I only beg you to do me the favour not to fan my face _Juilon_ your knife, since a slash might use it so ill that my mother who bore me would not know me, and I should not like to be considered ugly; neither is it right to mar and destroy what God made in His likeness.”

“Agreed,” replied Balbeja; “I will aim lower.”

“Except—except my stomach also, for I was ever a friend to cleanliness, and I should not like to see myself fouled in a bad way, if your knife and arm played havoc with my liver and intestines.”

“I will strike higher; but let us go on.”

“Take care of my chest, it was always weak.”

“Then just tell me, friend, _where_ am I to sound or tap you?”

“My dear Balbeja, ther always plenty of time and space to hack at a man: I have here on my left arm a wen, of which you can make meat as much as you like.”

“Here goes for it,” said Balbeja, and he hurled himself like an arrow; the other warded off the thrust with his cloak, and both, like skilful penmen, began again tracing and signatures in the air with dashes and flourishes, without, however, raising a particle of skin.

I do not know what would have been the end of this onslaught, since my venerable, dry, and shrivelled person was not suitable for forming a point of exclamation between two combatants; and the tavern-keeper troubled so little about what was happening that he drowned the stamping of their feet and clatter of the tumbling stools and utensils by scraping street music on a guitar as loud as he could. Otherwise he was as calm as if he were entertaining two angels instead of two devils incarnate.

I do not know, I repeat, how this scene would have ended, when there crossed the threshold a personage who came to take a part in the development of the drama. There entered, I say, a woman of twenty to twenty-two years of age, diminutive in body, superlative in audacity and grace. Neat and clean hose and shoes, short, black flounced petticoat, a linked girdle, head-dress or mantilla of fringed taffeta caught together at the nape of her neck, and a corner of it over her shoulder, she passed before my eyes with swaying hips, arms akimbo, and moving her head to and fro as she looked about her on all sides.

Upon seeing her the tavern-keeper dropped his instrument, and I was overtaken by perturbation such as I had not experienced for thirty years (I am, after all, only flesh and blood); but, without halting for such lay-figures, she advanced to the field of battle.

There was a lively to-do here: Don Pulpete and Don Balbeja when they saw Doña Gorja appear, first cause of the disturbance and future prize for the victor, increased their feints, flourishes, curvets, onsets, crouching, and bounds—all, however, without touching a hair. Our Helen witnessed in silence for a long time this scene in history with that feminine pleasure which the daughters of Eve enjoy at such critical moments. But gradually her pretty brow clouded over, until, drawing from her delicate ear, not a flower or earring, but the stump of a cigar, she hurled it amidst the jousters. Not even Charles V.’s cane in the last duel in Spain produced such favourable effects. Both came forward immediately with formal respect, and each, by reason of the discomposure of his person and clothes, presumed to urge a title by which to recommend himself to the fair with the flounces. She, as though pensive, was going over the passage of arms in her mind, and then, with firm and confident resolution, spoke thus—

“And is this affair for me?”

“Who else should it be for? since I ... since nobody——” they replied in the same breath.

“Listen, gentlemen,” said she. “For females such as I and my parts, of my charms and descent—daughter of la Gatusa, niece of la Méndez, and granddaughter of la Astrosa—know that there are neither pacts nor compacts, nor any such futile things, nor are any of them worth a farthing. And when men challenge each other, let the knife do its work and the red blood flow, so as not to have my mother’s daughter present without giving her the pleasure of snapping her fingers in the face of the other. If you pretend you are fighting for me, it’s a lie; you are wholly mistaken, and that not by halves. I love neither of you. Mingalarios of Zafra is to my taste, and he and I look upon you with scorn and contempt. Good-bye, my braves; and, if you like, call my man to account.”

She spoke, spat, smoothed the saliva with the point of her shoe, looking Pulpete and Balbeja full in the face, and went out with the same expressive movements with which she entered.

The two unvarnished braggarts followed the valorous Doña Gorja with their eyes; and then with a despicable gesture drew their knives across their sleeve as though wiping off the blood there might have been, sheathed them at one and the same time, and said together—

“Through woman the world was lost, through a woman Spain was lost;[9] but it has never been known, nor do ballads relate, nor the blind beggars sing,[10] nor is it heard in the square or markets, that two valiant men killed each other for another lover.”

“Give me that fist, Don Pulpete.”

“Your hand, Don Balbeja.”

They spoke and strode out into the street, the best friends in the world, leaving me all amazed at such whimsicality.

_Estébanez Calderón_ (_El Solitario_) (1799-1867).

_SEVILLE._

Who Naples fair has never seen never a marvel, sure, has seen; Nor who to Sevill ever been will ever wish to leave, I ween, “See bella Napoli and die!” is the Neapolitan’s cry. The counsel the Sevillians give is “Seville see and learn to live!”

_José Zorrilla_ (1817-1893).

_AFTER THE BULL-FIGHT._

Beg pardon, Mr. Magistrate, but it was as my husband tells it, for he stayed at home with Alfonsa and the baby, who was asleep, and he knew nothing about what happened.”

“Then, do you tell me how it happened.”

“I, sir? Well, you see, your Worship, an honest woman and do know how to explain myself well; but that gentleman there is my husband, and his conduct is such as your Honour sees, always drunk and out of work.”

“Come to the point.”

“Well, I’m coming; the cause of it all is a friend of the family and very intimate, as every one knows, and they call him Malgesto, and he can thrust a banderilla[11] into the morning star, much less into a bull; well, as I was saying, the same had told me: ‘Paca, I won’t have my lady friends look at el Chato, and if I see them do it, I’ll cut off the little nose he has left.’“All right!” said I, “but as you see, your Lordship or your Worship, taste is taste, and in no catechism have I seen it called a sin to look at somebody; so la Curra, who evil tongues say is Malgesto’s wife, and I paid no attention, you see, and....”

“Go on, you went to the bull-fight with the other man.”

“Tha just it, since he hired a fly and took me and la Curra, so that we might not go alone, and everybody would have done the same, and I....”

“To the point, to the point.”

“The point is a needle’s point, as one says, for take my word for it, the other from the arena never takes his eyes off us the whole time, and he placed the darts in a cross, and cursed them with gestures towards us, from which Heaven deliver us.”

“But at last....”

“At last the last bull was despatched as usual, and we all went away in peace and the grace of God, when as we were going out el Chato disappeared somehow, and I who expected to meet him at the door of the fly, who do you think I met? nobody more nor less than the banderillero, who said, ‘Ungrateful woman, is this how you obey my orders?’I said to him ... but no, I said nothing to him then, as if I were afraid, but I just shrugged my shoulders, and I do know if I did anything else. He answered nothing, except two or three oaths and a little blasphemy, and then seizing la Curra, he lifted her violently into the cab, and then he pushed me in, saying: ‘If you do go in I’ll kill el Chato’ and I, you see, your Honour, a decent woman, and do want anybody’s death.”

“And so what did you do?”

“What could I do? I got in.”

“And afterwards?”

“Afterwards came the row, for la Curra began to grumble, and so did I, he to keep us quiet gave us each two or three cuffs; and then we began to call him names and call each other names, for your Honour knows defence is only natural; to finish up, the horse took fright and nearly upset us; but at last we got out in the Calle del Barquillo; he set off running, la Curra after him, and tha the last I’ve seen of them.”

“So that you have nothing more to allege?”

“Nothing more.”

“And you swear to this?”

“I swear that I am a respectable woman, incapable of scandalous behaviour, though at times a poor female ca help ... but now I want to complain to your Worship, for I too have my wrongs.”

“Let us hear them.”

“In the first place I complain of all my neighbours, for they have stolen all I had in the house, inside and outside.”

“And how can you prove?”

“I can prove the things are gone, which is the principal thing; secondly, I complain of my husband, who does protect me in my danger; thirdly, I complain of la Curra for fourteen scratches and ten pinches, not to mention some kicks; besides this I complain of the policeman, who took me to prison only because I pulled a face at him on St. Anthony’s day,[12] when he tried to make love to me; lastly, I complain of your Worship, who are Justice of the Peace for this ward, and——”

“Silence, you baggage, or by Heavens I’ll put a gag in your mouth which it won’t be so easy to shake off.”

* * * * *

“What is it, constable?”

“Notice has just been brought, sir, that two men have been fighting with knives in front of Mother Alfons tavern, and are both badly wounded.”

“Who are they?”

“El Chato and Malgesto.”

“_Scenes in Madrid._” _Mesonero Romanos_ (_El Curioso Parlante_) (1803-1882).

_DELIGHTS OF A MADRID WINTER._

No, sir, you cannot deny that the best season of the year is winter. The theatres fill up. Gastronomists return to the juicy oyster; and as soon as it begins to freeze still their appetites with the tasty sea-bream. The crown ministers can infringe the laws with impunity, fearless of tumults and insurrections, for the people’s blood does not boil as in the month of July, and patriots prefer roasting chestnuts and toasting themselves over the brazier to haranguing in rain and snow. The shoeblacks dance with joy, for the mud is all in their favour. The doctors make their fortunes with colds and lung diseases. The apothecaries sell cough lozenges to their hearts’ content. The maid-servants make a new conquest every day of the Savoyards who cross the Pyrenees to clean out our chimneys and purses with their monkeys and hurdy-gurdies. But besides these and other votaries, who have powerful reasons for liking winter, there are other admirers of this season dubbed _rigorous_ by the ignorant vulgar. These devotees are the only really intelligent beings, and nobody will be able to deny they are right, when they patent the advantages of the months of November, December, and January over those of May, June, and July.

The monotony of summer is insipid. The sun shines upon everything with the very same rays. The flowers unceasingly diffuse the identical scent. The country is always green.... It is unsupportable, horrible! The votaries of summer say that all this makes the little birds charm with their trills and warbles every heart sensible to the delights of harmony. And we defenders of winter reply, who can compare the feeble song of the timid nightingale to the animated and piercing duets intoned by enamoured cats on our roofs in January? And the rain? Can anything be more delicious than rain? Oh, how I rave for the rain! Let us talk about the rain!

Some people say the rain is monotonous. Ignorant idiots! Let them apply that epithet to the sun, but the rain—monotonous? Bah! Could anybody adduce anything more varied and agreeable than rain? Clouds, mists, dew, hail, drizzle, showers, snow-storms ... what a charming mosaic of precious things!

Is there a more sublime spectacle than a shower? ... especially when contemplated from behind a well-glazed window? When the cataracts of heaven are opened on Sundays, it is worth while hiring a balcony in the Puerta del Sol. Those who have been so imprudent as to sally out without their wife and umbrella, recognise the advantage of the latter article over the former. But what a pleasing sight is the picturesque group of a married pair and their little children under the protection of one umbrella! And when the crystalline rain is accompanied by a strong soester, which the most impermeable of taffety cannot resist—that boisterous blast which removes hats and wigs ... oh, then the respectable couple who have issued forth to air their Sunday-best present a marvellous and really romantic spectacle. The husband, fearful for his precious umbrella abandons the arm of his better-half, and presses his feet firmly to the ground to save the article in question, for the wind has turned it inside out like a stocking, and seems desirous of snatching it from his hands, in the same way that it has whirled off his hat just as a flower-pot falls from one of the houses and smashes his skull. The modest spouse pays no attention either to her husband’s catastrophe, or to the gusts or downpour, but thinks only of her angelical prudicity, and how she may best avoid making a display of her person, for the wind against which she is struggling marks out all her contour, seeming to take a pleasure in exposing to the spectators the most hidden curves of his victim.

But I should never end if I gave a minute description of all the fascinations of my favourite season. I have said enough about the beauties of rain. In another article I hope to illustrate the pleasures of the cold, the charm of chilblains, and particularly all tha heroic in cerebral rheums, fully persuaded that once the reasons upon which I base my opinions are read, all my readers will agree with me that there is nothing to be compared with the delights of winter.

_Wenceslao Ayguals de Izco._

_IN THE EARLIER DAYS OF PHOTOGRAPHY._

“I tell you it’s not good at all,” vociferated a newly-elected parliamentary representative of some rural locality. “Why my constituency would recognise me in that portrait. It’s detestable!”

“It’s excellent!” replied the exasperated photographer. “There’s not a better photographer than myself in Madrid.”

“I do doubt it; but it’s clear you have not been successful with me.”

“But what’s the matter with it?”

“The matter?... Look at me!... Have I two eyes?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, in the photograph there’s only one.”

“But....”

“Have I two ears?”

“Of course, but....”

“Well, you’ve only given me one too.”

“But you are taken in profile....”

“Tut, tut, tut.... Do you take me for a simple rustic? However much I placed myself in profile, does that prevent my having two eyes and two ears?”

(_Aside_) “And very long ones....” (_Aloud_) “But....”

“Again, is my neck black?”

“That is the shade....”

“No imputations, sir! ther nothing shady in me or my political life, and in my district they will tell you who I am; and if, though I am mayor, I never served my two years in the militia, why....”

“But the photograph, the photograph!”

“The photograph is not like me.”

“Then you wo take it?”

“No, sir.”

“Good; then I shall put it in the window, with the inscription, ‘The original of this is a cheat.’”

“You can do it....”

“Everybody who knows you....”

“Who would recognise me?... My electors know perfectly well that I have two eyes and two ears.”

“Then go, sir, in Heave name.”

“And to think that people say photography is so true to life!” growled, as he departed, this father of his country.

“Number 25,” cried the manservant, putting his head in at the door of the waiting-room.

And Number 25, who is not a bad-looking lady, passes through the corridor and enters the studio.

The photographer bows, and the following conversation begins:—

“Sir,” said the lady, “my happiness lies in your hands.”

“I am very pleased, sure; but I do quite understand....”

“I am a single lady, sir, as yet single....”

“Been so long?”

“What?”

“I beg your pardon, I mean ... at your service.”

“I must tell you that a gentleman I do not love wants to marry me perforce.... He resides at Havana, and I do not wish to have my husband so far away.”

“I understand.”

“Now, tell me, if a man persisted in marrying you from Havana....”

“The hypothesis is not admissible, mm.”

“Ah, true! well, if a woman....”

“There are matters, madam, in which the person interested can alone....”

“It is true; for this reason, wishing at all costs to break off the projected marriage, I have determined to send my likeness to my suitor.”

“Your looks, mm, will captivate him more than ever.”

“That’s why; ... I wish my likeness not to be my likeness: I want to come out ugly, very ugly.”

“That’s impossible, madam; photography always tells the truth.”

“Do you refuse?”

“Decidedly. Even if I tried you would not come out ugly.”

“That’s what my cousin the lieutenant says.”

“And he’s right.”

“But I must carry out my plan, and if you will not do it I shall go to a photographer I saw in the Calle de Francia, where some hideous women are exhibited.”

“As you like, madam.”

The lady withdraws, and the manservant calls out, “Number 26.”

Number 26 is a stalwart country bumpkin in a russet suit, who, after entering the studio, is asked if he desires his photograph on a card or on glass.

“I want those that cost twelve reals by the notice,” says he.

“Good. Sit down in that chair.”

“But it must be exactly like me; I give you warning.”

“You will see, sir.”

“And I must appear in the fancy dress I wear at home in our village for the Carnival.”

“Have you brought it with you?”

“No; ought I to have?”

“Most certainly.”

“Take me now, and the first time I come to Madrid again I’ll bring the dress.”

“Impossible!”

“Well, I am surprised; to think that....”

“Come, come, it’s getting late, and other people are waiting for me.” [_Exit bumpkin._

“Number 27.”

“_Viaje crítico alrededor de la Puerta del Sol._”

_M. Ossorio y Bernard._

_THE OLD CASTILIAN._

Since I have grown older I very seldom care to change the order of my way of living, which has now been settled a long time, and I base this repugnance upon the fact that I have never for a single day abandoned my Lares to break my system without being overtaken by a most sincere repentance as the presumption of my deluded hopes. Nevertheless a remnant of the old-fashioned courtesy adopted by our forefathers in their intercourse obliges me at times to accept certain invitations, which to refuse would be rudeness, or at least a ridiculous affectation of delicacy.

Some days ago I was walking through the streets in search of material for my articles. Buried in my thoughts, I surprised myself several times, laughing like a poor wretch at my own fancies, and mechanically moving my lips. A stumble or so reminded me now and again that to walk on the pavements of Madrid it is not the best of circumstances to be either poet or philosopher; more than one malicious smile, more than one look of wonder from the passers-by, made me reflect that soliloquies should not be made in public; and when turning corners not a few collisions with those who turned them as heedlessly as I made me recognise that the absent-minded are not among the number of elastic bodies, much less among glorious and impassable beings. Such being my frame of mind, imagine my sensations upon receiving a horrible smack which a huge hand attached (it seemed to me) to a brawny arm administered to one of my shoulders, which unfortunately bear not the slightest resemblance to those of Atlas!

Not wishing to make it understood that I would not recognise this energetic way of announcing on self, nor to rebuff the goodwill, which doubtless wished to show itself to be more than mediocre by leaving me crooked for the rest of the day, I was merely about to turn round to see who was so much my friend as to treat me so badly. But my Old Castilian is a man who, when he is joking, does not stop half-way. What? my reader will ask. He gave further proofs of his intimacy and affection? He clasped his hands tightly over my eyes from behind, crying out, “Who am I?” bubbling over with delight at the success of his pretty trick. “Who you are? A brute,” I was about to reply; but I suddenly remembered who it might be, and substituted the words, “I Braulio.” Upon hearing me he loosened his hands, held his sides for laughter, disturbing the whole street, and making us both very conspicuous.

“Good, good! How did you recognise me?”

“Who could it be but you?...”

“Well, so you’ve come from your dear Biscay?”

“No, Braulio, I have not come?”

“Always the same merry humour. What does it matter? I a way we have of talking in Spain.... Do you know it’s my birthday to-morrow?”

“I wish you many happy returns of the day.”

“Oh, no formalities between us; you know a plain fellow and an Old Castilian, and call a spade a spade; consequently I require no compliments from you, but consider yourself invited——”

“To what?”

“To dine with me.”

“Impossible.”

“You must.”

“I cannot,” I insist, trembling.

“You ca?”

“Very many thanks——”

“Thanks? Very well, my dear friend; as not the Duke of F., or Count P., of course——”

Who can resist an attack of this kind? Who cares to appear proud? “It is not that, but——”

“Well, if it’s not that,” he breaks in, “I shall expect you at two. We dine early at my house—Spanish style. I expect a lot of people; there will be the famous improvisor X.; T. will sing after dinner in his usual first-rate style; and in the evening J. will play and sing some trifles.”

This consoled me somewhat, and I had to give way. “Everybody,” said I to myself, “has an evil day sometimes. In this world, if one wishes to preserve friends, one must endure their civilities.”

“You wo fail, unless you want to quarrel with me?”

“I shall not fail,” I said in a lifeless voice and low spirits, like a fox vainly revolving in the trap in which it has allowed itself to be caught.

“Then good-bye till to-morrow,” and he gave me a parting slap.

I watched him go as the sower watches the decreasing cloud of his seed, and remained wondering how one should take such adverse and fatal friendships.

* * * * *

Two lock arrived. As I knew my friend Braulio, I did not think it advisable to make myself too fine for his party; that, I am sure, would have annoyed him; nevertheless I could not dispense with a light frock-coat and a white pocket-handkerchief as essential for such birthday festivities. Above all, I dressed myself as slowly as possible, like the wretched criminal confessing at the foot of the gallows, who would like to have committed a hundred more sins the which to confess in order to gain more time. I was invited at two, and I entered the state-parlour at half-past two.

I will not dwell on the ceremonious calls made before dinner-time by an infinite number of visitors, among which were not least all the officials of his department with their spouses and children, their cloaks, umbrellas, galoshes, and house-dogs; I will be silent as to the foolish compliments paid to the head of the family on his birthday, nor describe the monstrous circle which was formed in the parlour by the assembly of so many heterogeneous people, discoursing upon how the weather was about to change, and how the winter is generally colder than the summer. Let us come to the point: four lock struck, and we, the invited guests, found ourselves alone. Unluckily for me, Señor X., who was to have entertained us, being a connoisseur of this class of invitation, had had the good idea to fall sick that morning; the celebrated T. found himself opportunely compromised by another invitation, and the young lady who was to sing and play so well was hoarse to such a degree that she was appalled lest a single word should drop from her lips, while she had a rag round one of her fingers. Alas, for my beguiled expectations!

“I suppose all who are to dine are here,” exclaimed Don Braulio. “Let us go to table, my dear.”

“Wait a bit,” replied his wife in a loud whisper. “Such a lot of callers prevented my being in the kitchen, and....”

“But, look, it’s five lock....”

“Dinner will be ready in a moment....”

It was five lock when we sat down.

“Ladies and gentleman,” said our amphitryon, as we staggered into our respective chairs, “I insist upon your making yourselves quite at home; we do stand upon ceremony in my house. Oh, Figaro! I want _you_ to be quite comfortable; you are a poet, and besides, these gentlemen who know how intimate we are will not be offended if I make an exception of you; take off your coat; it wo do to stain it.”

“Why should I stain it?” I replied, biting my lips.

“Oh, tha all right; I’ll lend you a loose jacket; sorry I have one for everybody.”

“I’d sooner not, thank you.”

“Nonsense! My jacket! Here it is; it will be a little large for you!”

“But, Braulio....”

“You must have it—bother etiquette!” and he thereupon pulled off my coat himself, _velis nolis_, and buried me in a great striped jacket, through which only my feet and head protruded, and the sleeves of which would probably not permit me to eat. I thanked him; he thought he was doing me a favour.

The days upon which my friend has no visitors he contents himself with a low table, little more than a cobble bench, because he and his wife, as he says, what should they want more? From this little table he carries his food, like water drawn up a well, to his mouth, where it arrives dripping after its long journey; for to imagine that these people keep a proper table and eat comfortably every day in the year is to expect too much. It is easy, therefore, to conceive that the installations of a large table for a dinner-party was an event in that house, so much so that a table at which scarcely eight people could have eaten comfortably had been considered capable of sitting the whole fourteen of us. We had to sit sideways with one shoulder towards the dinner, and the elbows of the guests entered on intimate relationship with each other in the most confiding fashion possible. They put me as in a place of honour between a child five years old, raised on some cushions, which I had to arrange every minute, as the natural restlessness of my youthful neighbour caused them to slip, and one of those men that occupy in this world the room of three, whose corpulency rose from the basis of the armchair (the only one) in which he was sitting as from the point of a needle. The table-napkins which we silently unfolded were new, for they were just as little commodities of daily use, and were pulled by these good gentlemen through a button-hole of their frock-coats to serve as intermediary bodies between the sauces and their broadcloth.

“You will have to do penance, gentlemen,” exclaimed our amphitryon as soon as he had sat down.

“What ridiculous affectation if untrue,” said I to myself; “and if it is true, what folly to invite on friends to do penance.” Unfortunately it was not long before I knew that there was in that expression more truth than my good Braulio imagined. Interminable and of poor taste were the compliments with which, upon passing and receiving each dish, we wearied one another. “Pray help yourself.” “Do me the favour.” “I could think of it.” “Pass it on to the lady.” “Ah, tha right.” “Pardon me.” “Thank you.”

“No ceremony, gentlemen,” exclaimed Braulio, and was the first to dip his spoon into his plate.

The soup was followed by an olla, an assortment of the most savoury impertinences of that most annoying but excellent dish; here was some meat, there some green stuff; here the dried beans,[13] there the ham; the chicken to the right, the bacon in the middle, and the Estremaduran sausage to the left. Then came some larded veal, upon which may the curse of Heaven alight, and after this another dish, and another and another and another, half of which were brought over from an hotel, which will suffice to excuse our praising them, the other half made at home by their own maid and a Biscayan wench, a help hired for this festivity, and the mistress of the house, who on such occasions is supposed to have a hand in everything, and can consequently superintend nothing properly.

“You must be indulgent with this dish,” said the latter of some pigeons, “they are a little burnt.”

“But, my dear....”

“I only left them for a moment, and you know what servants are.”

“What a pity this turkey was not half an hour longer before the fire! It was put down too late. And do you think that stew is a little smoked?”

“What can you expect? A woman ca be everywhere at once.”

“Oh, thee excellent!” we all exclaimed, leaving the pieces on our plates—“delicious!”

“This fish is bad.”

“Well, they said in the office of the fresh fish delivery that it had only just arrived; the man there is so stupid!”

“Where does this wine come from?”

“Now there yoe wrong, for it’s....”

“Detestable.”

These short dialogues were accompanied by a number of furtive glances from the husband to acquaint his wife of some negligence, and both tried to give us to understand that they were quite at home in all those formulæ which in similar cases are reputed correct, and that all the blunders were the fault of the servants, who can never learn to wait. But these omissions were so numerous, and looks were of such little avail, that the husband had recourse to pinches and kicks, and his wife, who, until the present, had barely succeeded in rising superior to her spouse’s persecution, now became inflamed in the face, and had tears in her eyes.

“Dear madam, do not distress yourself about such trifles,” said her neighbour.

“Ah! I assure you I shall not do this kind of thing in the house again; you do know what it means; another time, Braulio, we’ll dine at the hotel, and then you’ll not have ...”

“You, madam, shall do what I ...”

“Braulio! Braulio!”

A terrible storm was about to burst; however, all the guests vied with each other in settling these disputes born of the desire to demonstrate the greatest refinement, and of which not the smallest components were Braulio’s mania, and the concluding remark which he again directed to the assembly with regard to the inutility of ceremony, by which he understood being properly served and knowing how to eat. Is there anything more ridiculous than those people who wish to pass for refined in the depths of the crassest ignorance of social usage, and who, to favour you, forcibly oblige you to eat and drink, and will not allow you to do what you like? And why are there people who only care to eat with a little more comfort on birthdays?

To add to all this, the child to my left violently knocked against a dish of ham and tomatoes a saucer of olives, of which one hit one of my eyes, and prevented me seeing clearly for the rest of the day; the stout gentleman to my right had taken the precaution to heap up on the cloth by the side of my bread the crumbs of his own and the bones of the birds which he had picked; and the guest opposite me, who piqued himself on his carving, had taken upon himself to make the autopsy of a capon, or cock, for nobody knew which, and whether by reason of the advanced age of the victim, or the lack of anatomical science of the executioner, the joints would not sever.

“This bird has no joints!” exclaimed the poor wretch, the drops of perspiration running down his face from his struggles, “for the carver is the labourer who digs that I may eat,” and then a wonderful occurrence took place. Upon one of the attacks the fork, as if in resentment, slipped on the animal, which, thus violently despatched, took a flight as in its happier days, and then quietly alighted on the tablecloth, as on a roost in the poultry yard.

The fright was general, and the alarm reached its climax when a sauce-boat, impelled by the bird’s wild career, upset, splashing my snow-white shirt. At this point the carver rose hastily, with a mind to chase the fugitive fowl, and as he precipitated himself upon it, a bottle to the right, which he knocked with his arm, abandoning its perpendicular position, poured out an abundant stream of Valdepeñas[14] over the capon and the cloth. The wine ran; the uproar increased; salt was abundantly sprinkled on the top of the wine to save the cloth; to save the table a napkin was inserted below the cloth, and an eminence arose on the site of so many ruins. A terrified maid-servant, who was bidden bear away the capon, now reposing in its own gravy, tilted the dish as she lifted it over me, and an accursed shower of grease descended like the dew upon the meadows to leave lasting traces on my pearl-grey pantaloons. The anguish and confusion of the girl are beyond bounds; she withdraws, unsuccessful in her excuses, and, turning round, collides with the waiter, who is carrying a dozen clean plates and a salver for the dessert wines, and the whole machine comes to the ground with the most horrible clatter and commotion.

“By St. Peter!” roars our host, and a mortal pallor diffused itself over his features, while a fire broke out on his wif face. “But no matter; let us continue, friends,” said he, calming down.

Oh, honest homes where a modest olla and a single dish constitute the daily happiness of a family, shun the perturbation of a birthday dinner-party! The custom of eating well and being well served every day can alone avert similar discomfiture.

Are there any more disasters? Alas, there are for my miserable self! Doña Juana, the lady with the black and yellow teeth, holds out to me from her plate and with her own fork a dainty bit, which I am bound to accept and swallow; the child diverts himself by shooting cherry-stones at the eyes of the assembly; Don Leandro makes me taste the delicious orange, which I had refused, squeezed into his glass, which preserves the indelible traces of his greasy lips; my fat friend is smoking, and makes me the flue of his chimney; finally, oh last of miseries! the clamour and uproar increase, voices already hoarse demand couplets and stanzas, and Figaro is the only poet present.

“You must.” “I for you to say something,” they all shout. “Start him with the first line; let him compose a couplet for each of us.” “I’ll start him:

‘To Don Braulio on this day.’”

“Gentlemen, for Heave sake!”

“Ther no getting out of it.”

“I’ve never improvised in my life.”

“Do play the bashful.”

“I shall go.”

“Lock the door. He sha’n’t leave the room till he recites something.”

And so I repeat some verses at last, and vomit absurdities, which they praise, and the smoke, the hubbub, and the purgatory increases.

Thank Heavens, I succeed in escaping from this new pandemonium. At last I again breathe the pure air of the street; there are now no more lunatics, no more Old Castilians around me.

“Ye gods, I thank you!” I exclaimed, breathing freely like a stag who has just escaped a dozen dogs and can barely hear their distant barks. “Henceforward I do not pray for riches, office, or honours. But deliver me from those houses in which a dinner-party is an event, in which a decent table is only laid for visitors, in which they think they are doing you a good turn while they are doing you a bad one, in which they are over-polite, in which they recite verses, in which there are children, in which there are fat men, in which, finally, there reigns the brutal frankness of the Old Castilians! If I fall again by similar temptations, may I ever lack roast beef, may beefsteaks vanish from this world, may timbales of macaroni be annihilated, may there be no turkeys in Perigueux, nor pies in Perigord, may the wines of Bordeaux dry up, and everybody but myself drink the delicious foam of champagne!”

_Mariano José de Larra_ (_Figaro_) (1809-1837).

_A DEMAGOGIC JOURNALIST._

Eleven was striking by the nearest clock; and as the last stroke vibrated upon Don Liberato Plebist tympanum an instantaneous electric commotion was transmitted from it to his brain, which made him hastily sit up in bed and begin to dress. He violently rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, which, together with the use of his pocket-handkerchief and four or five loud hollow coughs, sufficed to cause him to regain entire possession of his senses and natural powers, and shook him out of that kind of lethargy, or state of doze, which between a deep sleep and being wide awake occupies the function of a scruple.

He had fallen asleep with a fixed idea that he must rise early to write a long, forcible, and brilliant article, and seeing the sun already so advanced on its course, he jumped out of bed, and made towards his study in a rich dressing-gown and canvas slippers delicately embroidered by some feminine hand. He leaned back in an armchair before a solid mahogany writing-table, pulled the bell loudly three times by a silken rope; a footman appeared, who placed upon the table the silver brazier with some large red-hot pieces of charcoal; and then, when he had demanded breakfast with an imperative manner, and the man had withdrawn, Don Liberato lit a fragrant Havana, seized it between his teeth, grasped the pen with his right hand, rested his brow on his left, and leaning his elbow on the desk and gently tapping his right foot on the carpet, as if to excite ideas by this slight motion, remained in this attitude for five minutes, at the end of which he put his pen to paper and began to write to the following effect:—

“The incarnate enemies of the unhappy people—those wicked and egoistic men, who live under the shadow of privileges (_Don Liberato smiled to himself_) and grow fat with the substance of the poor—take very good care in all their writings and perorations to speak of nothing but principles and political questions, more or less metaphysical and vague, astutely keeping silence when there is any reference to social questions, upon which is actually based the revolution, which in this our age agitates Spain, disturbs Europe, and threatens the world.”

(_Liberato, savouring the sonority of this rounded period, expelled from his cigar a dense cloud of azure and aromatic smoke ... and continued writing._)

“The priority of certain castes, the inequality with which property is distributed, the malign influence of priesthood, the tyranny of the rich and potential over the masses, and other thousand obstacles which oppose the felicity of the people, are those which must be destroyed, but with regard to which the partisans of abuses ever succeed in embroiling a discussion. You, unhappy day-labourers, unfortunate artisans, fathers of a numerous family, who to gain bread for your unfortunate offspring must abandon your narrow bed at break of day....”

(_At this moment Don Liberato’s clock struck a quarter to twelve, and the rays of the noonday sun, penetrating the green curtains, succeeded in bathing with light the richly furnished room of the journalist, who went on writing thus_):—

“You will tell me if what interests you most is to discuss the preference for this or that method of electing representatives, or, on the contrary, the monstrous superiority of the potentate swimming in pleasures, of the sensual sybarite passing the night amidst the delicacies of the table, while you earn with the sweat of your brow the bread you must eat soaked in your tears.”

(_The room door is opened, and Don Liberato’s footman enters carrying an exquisite china tea-service, with a savoury dish, tea, milk, and buttered toast. Placing his burden on a small table, covered with a fine white embroidered cloth, he draws it in the greatest silence within reach of his master to the right of the desk, and retires stealthily, so as not to interrupt the sublime composition which continues multiplying sheets of paper thus wise_):—

“Ye hungry and naked sons of the unfortunate Spanish people (_The writer throws away the stump of the Havana, and crams his mouth full with sweet-bread_) rear your naked and hungry children with anxiety and fatigue, and rear them to be the slaves of a rich, powerful, and proud aristocracy....”

(_Don Liberato again smiles to himself, and devours the rest of the sweet-bread._)

“Rear them to till _their_ land, to build _their_ palaces, to weave _their_ rich clothes, to wrench from the bowels of the earth the precious metals with which _their_ ostentatious apparel is embroidered, and _their_ ornaments and furniture covered in scandalous profusion.”

(_The writer imbibes about a quart of tea, and attacks the buttered toast._)

“Rear them that they may be dragged into misery with you, while the gilded chariots of the great, bearing their mistresses to shows and pageants, roll by, threatening to run over them, and bespattering them with mud....”

“Sir,” said the Gallegan servant, entering timidly.

“Wha the matter?” replied Don Liberato.

“They have brought this letter from the lady. It is urgent.”

Having read the note, he replied thus—

“Say, ‘very well’ and Domingo, remember to hire a carriage for this evening at five sharp: and I ca see anybody now, I must get on with my writing.”

“This, this is the real evil of society, the pitiful state of which the present generation aspires to vary by a revolution as glorious as just. Let those monstrous fortunes be divided and subdivided, let them return in small capitals to the hands of the poor people who made them. Thus these terrible scenes of misery will not be seen which are augmented by the scandalous neglect of the Government for the widows and orphans of the best servants of the State.”

“Sir!”

“What is it now?”

“The widow of that captain, who comes to see if you....”

“D—— you and the widow; throw her downstairs, and do open the door to every beggar.”

“But there also came....”

“Who came?—quickly.”

“A man with cigars, the one who brought that other box.”

“Here, take these twenty-five dollars, and go to the devil! Let us see if I can finish my article.”

“Meanwhile the vile aristocrats keep the people in the most humiliating servitude, and their condition and treatment is worse than that of cattle.”

“Sir.”

“If you do shut that door, you brute, I’ll throw the ink-bottle at your head.”

“The habits of despotism which they have acquired through the course of centuries....”

“But, sir, only one word....”

(_Don Liberato hurls the salver at the poor Gallegan, and then continues scribbling with the greatest amenity until he comes to the following words_):—

“And these errors, upheld by venal journalists....”

(_Domingo returns to the charge, preceded this time by a man of ugly appearance, who pays Don Liberato a large sum for a compilation. Having taken the money, and returned the receipt, he continues_):—

“And who tells these calumniators that the defence of the people is a propensity to anarchy; that the severe censure of deeds of despotism is an act of rebellion; and that the struggle against fanaticism is unbelief, impiety, and hatred of the sacred religion which we venerate more than they?”

“May I go out, sir?”

“No, no, hang you, and by heavens if you interrupt me again....”

“It is Sunday, sir, if you remember, and there is only late mass now.”

“You must do without mass, I require you here.”

“You must take it on your conscience, sir.”

“And so I will, you rascal; and I may take a stick too, and send you to hear mass in the infernal regions, that will stop your being such a confounded hypocrite.”

* * * * *

With this last invective the scene ended between master and man, and with a few more lines the article of our journalist. The latter, after having dined sumptuously, passed the evening driving with his mistress, entered a café, where he spent a dollar or two, calling the waiter a scoundrel and stupid idiot; went in the night to a gambling-house, where he parted with ten gold pieces, and returned to bed with the dawn, forming plans for heartrending articles on the lot of the poor, and furious declamations against the aristocracy, the rich, and the Government.

“_El Estudiante._” _Antonio Maria Segovia._

_A CAT CHASE DURING THE SIEGE OF GERONA._

“Siseta,” I said suddenly, “it is a long time since I have seen Pussy, but I suppose she is wandering about somewhere with her three kittens.”

“Oh!” she replied sorrowfully, “do you know that Dr. Pablo has done for the whole family? Poor Pussy! He says the flesh is excellent; but I think I would rather die of hunger than eat her.”

“What? he killed Pussy? I never heard about it; and the little kittens too?”

“I didn’t like to tell you. The last few days that we have not been at home, the doctor often came in. One day he knelt down and implored me to give him something for his sick daughter, for he had no provisions left or money to buy them. While he was talking one of the kittens sprang on to my shoulder, and Don Pablo seized it quickly and put it into his pocket. The next day he came again and offered me his drawing-room furniture for another kitten, and without awaiting my answer went into the kitchen, then into the dark lobby, lay in wait and chased the kitten like a cat after a rat. I had to bathe the scratches on his face. The third perished in the same way, and then Pussy disappeared from the house, probably thinking she was not safe.”

I was meditating upon the desertion of the poor animal, when Don Pablo suddenly presented himself. He was lean and cadaverous-looking, and had lost by physical and moral sufferings the kindly expression and gentle accent which distinguished him. His clothes were disorderly and torn, and he was carrying a large gun and a hunting-knife.

“Siseta,” he said abruptly, and forgetting to greet me, although we had not seen each other for several days. “I know now where that cunning cat is.”

“Where is she, Don Pablo?”

“In the loft the other side of the yard where my corn and straw was stored when I kept a horse.”

“Perhaps it is not our Pussy,” said Siseta, in her generous desire to save the poor animal.

“Yes, it is, I tell you. She can’t deceive me. The sly thing jumped in this morning through the pantry window and stole a kitte leg hanging there. The audacity! and to eat her own children’s flesh too. I must put an end to her, Siseta. I have already given you a good part of my furniture for the kittens. I have nothing valuable left except my books of medicine. Will you have them in exchange for the cat?”

“Don Pablo, I will take neither furniture nor books, catch Pussy, and, as we are reduced to such extremities, give part of her to my brothers.”

“Good. Andres, do you dare chase the animal?”

“I do think we want such a lot of arms,” I replied.

“But I do. Let us go.”

* * * * *

The doctor and I climbed to the loft, which we entered slowly and warily, for fear we might be attacked by the ravenous beast, probably maddened by hunger and the instinct of preservation. Don Pablo, lest our prey should escape us, closed the door from within and we remained in almost total darkness, since the feeble light which entered by a narrow slit of a window merely illumined the immediate obscurity. Gradually, however, our eyes got accustomed to the murkiness, and we saw that the room was lumbered with a lot of old and broken furniture; above our heads floated dense curtains of spider webs covered with the dust of a century. Then we began to look for the truant; but saw nothing nor in fact any indication of her presence. I expressed my doubt to Don Pablo; but he replied—

“Oh, she’s here. I saw her enter a moment ago.”

We moved some empty cases, threw on one side some bits of a broken armchair and a little barrel, and then saw a small body glide away and leap over the piled-up objects. It was Pussy. We could see in the dark background her two golden-green eyes, watching the movements of her persecutors with a fierce inquietude.

“Do you see her?” said the doctor. “Take my gun and shoot at her.”

“No,” I replied laughing. “It is not very easy to aim in the dark. The gun is of no good. Keep on one side and give me your hunting-knife.”

The two eyes remained motionless in their first position, and that green and golden light, unlike the irradiation of any other gaze, or any gem, produced in me a strong impression of terror. I gradually distinguished the outline of the animal, and the grey and black stripes on her tawny coat multiplied in my eyes, increasing the size of her body till she had the proportions of a tiger. I was afraid, why deny it? and for a moment repented having undertaken such a difficult task. Don Pablo was more frightened than I, his teeth were chattering.

We held a council of war, the result of which was that we were to take the offensive; but when we had recovered a little valour, we heard a low rumbling, a noise between a dove’s coo and a death-rattle, which announced Puss hostile disposition. The cat was saying to us in her language, “Come on, murderers of my children, I am ready for you!”

She had first adopted a sphinx-like posture, but now cowered together, her angular head resting on her fore paws, and her eyes changed, projecting a blue light in vertical rays. Her grim aspect seemed to glower at us. Then she raised her head, rubbed her paws over her face, cleaning her long whiskers, and took a few somersaults to descend to a nearer site, where she crouched in readiness to spring. The muscular force possessed by these animals in the articulation of their hind paws is immense, and she could have sprung upon us in one bound. I saw her looks were directed more especially towards Don Pablo than myself.

“Andres,” he said, “if you are afraid, I shall attack her. I disgraceful that such a little animal should make cowards like this of two men. Yes, Señora Pussy, we shall eat you.”

It seemed as if the animal heard and understood the threatening words, for my friend had scarcely pronounced them when she precipitated herself with lightning speed upon him, alighting on his neck and shoulders. The struggle was short, and the cat had put into execution the whole of her offensive power, so that the rest of the combat could not be otherwise than favourable to us. I hastened to my all defence, and the animal fell to the ground, carrying away with her claws some particles of the good doctor’s person and tattooing my right hand. She then doubled in different directions, but once as she sprang at me, I had the good luck to receive her on the point of the hunting-knife, which put an end to the unequal combat.

“The animal was more formidable than I thought,” said Don Pablo, putting his hand to his beating heart.

“Well, doctor,” said I, after a pause, “let us now divide the prey.”

The doctor pulled a face of profound disgust, and, wiping the blood from his neck, said in the most aggressive tone I had heard from his lips—

“Wha that about dividing? Siseta gave me the cat in exchange for my books. Do you know my daughter ate nothing yesterday?”

“Siseta and the children have also eaten nothing,” I replied.

Don Pablo scratched his head, making ugly contractions with his mouth and nostrils—and taking the dead animal by the neck, said—

“Do bother me, Andres. The children can live on any rubbish they pick up in the street; but my invalid needs better food; do me the favour not to touch the cat.”

“Do you mean to say you wo divide the cat? Good, good,” I said, and advanced towards him. Our hands met; we struggled for a short time and then the doctor fell and rolled along the floor, leaving me in full possession of our prey.

“Thief! thief!” he exclaimed. “Is this the way you rob me? Just wait a moment!”

I was picking up our victim to leave the loft. But the doctor ran, or rather leapt like a cat, to the gun, and aimed it full at me, crying with a hoarse and tremulous voice—

“Drop the cat, or I’ll kill you.”

* * * * *

“Don Pablo,” said I, “take the cat. You have become a wild beast.”

Without reply, but showing the horrible agitation of his mind by a smothered groan, he seized the animal which I had hurled from me, and opening the door, disappeared.

_Perez Galdos._

_A WELL-WON DISH OF CHERRIES._

Manalet ran away, but he soon came back with a lot of other little boys, all barefoot, dirty, unkempt, and ragged, and amongst them his brother Badoret, with Gasparo pickapack, clinging tightly with arms and legs to his shoulders and waist. All seemed very pleased, especially Badoret, who was distributing cherries to his companions.

“Take one, Andres,” said the boy, giving me a cherry. “How did you think I got them? Well, I’ll tell you. I was going with Gasparo on my back down the calle del Lobo, when I saw open the gate of the Convent of the Capuchin Nuns, which is always shut. Gasparo would keep on asking me for bread and crying, and I gave him little slaps to make him keep quiet, telling him that if he wouldn’t leave off I would tell his Excellency the Governor. But when I saw the convent gate open, I said to myself, ‘there will be something to find here,’and I slipped in. I crossed the courtyard, and then entered the church and passed through the choir till I reached a long corridor with a lot of little rooms, and I didn’t meet a soul. I looked carefully everywhere to see if I could get anything, but I only came across some candle-ends and two or three skeins of silk, which I began to chew to see if they gave any juice. I was thinking of returning to the street, when I heard behind me, ‘_Ss—t, Ss—t_,’ as if somebody was calling me. I looked, but I saw nobody. Oh, how afraid I was, Andres! Down at the bottom of the corridor there was a huge print, in which was a devil with a long green tail. I thought it was the devil calling me, and began to run. But, oh dear! I could not find a door, and I went round and round that horrid corridor, and all the time, ‘_Ss—t_!’ And then I heard some one say, ‘Little boy, come here,’and I looked at the ceiling and the walls, until I at last saw behind some bars a white hand and a worn and wrinkled face. I was not afraid then, and went to it. The nun said to me, ‘Come, don’t be afraid, I have something to say to you.’I went close to the grating, and said to her, ‘Pardon me, Señora, I thought you were the devil.’”

“Why, it must have been some poor sick nun who could not escape with the others.”

“That’s it. The lady said to me, ‘Little boy, how did you come in here? God has sent you to do me a great service. All the sisters have gone away. I am ill and a cripple. They wanted to take me, but it grew late, and so they left me behind. I am very afraid. Is all the town burnt? Have the French entered? Just now, when I was half asleep, I dreamt that all the sisters had been beheaded in the slaughter-house, and that the French were eating them. Boy, would you venture to go, now at once, to the fort, and give this note to my nephew, Don Alonso Carrillo, captain of the regiment of Ultonia? If you do so, I will give you the dish of cherries you see here, and this half loaf.’“Even if she hadn’t offered them me I would have gone, you know. I seized the note, she told me where I could get out, and I ran towards the fort. Gasparo cried more than before, but I said to him, ‘If you don't keep quiet, I’ll put you in a cannon as if you were a ball, and shoot you away, and you’ll go rolling amongst the French, who will cook you in a saucepan and eat you.’

“At last I reached the fort. What a lot of firing there! That down here is nothing to it. The cannon balls whizzed through the air like a flight of birds. And do you think I was afraid? Not I! Gasparo went on crying and screaming; but I showed him the flames bursting from the bombs, and the flashes from the powder-pans, and said, ‘Look, how pretty! We are going to shoot cannons too now!’

“A soldier gave me a cuff to push me to one side, and I fell on a heap of dead, but I got up and went straight on. Then the Governor appeared, and grasping a large black banner he waved it in the air, and then he said that he would have the first coward hanged. What do you think of that? I went in front and shouted, ‘Quite right, too!’ ‘Some soldiers told me to go away, and the women who were looking after the wounded began to abuse me, asking me why I had taken the baby there. What a crowd of sparks! They fell like flies, first one, then another. The French wanted to get in, but we wouldn't let them.”

“What? You wouldn't?”

“Yes; the women and our men threw stones from the top of the wall at the scoundrels who wanted to climb them. I loosened Gasparo, putting him on the top of a box in which was some powder and cannon-balls, and I also began to throw stones. And what stones! I threw one which weighed at least six hundredweight, and hit a Frenchman, doubling him in two. You ought to have seen it. The French were many, and they wanted to do nothing else but come into the fort. You should have seen the Governor, Andresillo! Don Mariano, and I, we sprang in front ... and always went where the soldiers were most hard pressed. I don’t know what I did, but I did something, Andres. I could not see for the smoke, nor hear for the noise. Such terrible firing! Into your very ears, Andres. It makes one quite deaf. I began to shout, calling them blackguards, thieves, and telling them that Napoleon was a good-for-nothing. Maybe they didn’t hear me for the noise, but I made them turn back and a-half. Rather! Well, Andres, not to tire you, I stayed there until they retreated. The Governor told me he was satisfied—no, he did not speak to me, he said it to the rest.”

“But the letter.”

“I looked for Captain Carrillo—I knew him by sight before—and I met him at last when all was over. I gave him the paper, and he gave me a message for the nun. Then, remembering Gasparo, I went to look for him where I had left him, but he wasn’t there. I began to shout out, ‘Gasparo, Gasparo!’ but he didn’t answer. At last I saw him under a gun carriage, rolled up like a little ball, with his fists in his mouth, looking between the spokes of the wheel, and a large tear in each eye. I put him on my back and ran to the convent. But now comes the best of it; as I was going along thinking of battles, and my head full of all I had seen, I forgot the message the Captain had given me for the nun. She scolded me, saying that I had torn up the letter, and wanted to deceive her, and that she couldn’t think of giving me either the cherries or the bread she had promised. And then she began to grumble, and called me a bad boy and a beast. One of Gasparo’s toes was bleeding, and the nun tied a rag round it; but the cherries—not a single one! At last all was settled, for Captain Carrillo came himself, and she gave me the cherries and the bread, and I ran out of the convent.”

“Take the child home to your sister,” I said, noticing that poor Gaspar foot was still bleeding.

“I have kept some cherries for Siseta,” he cried.

* * * * *

“Oh, I say, boys!” shouted Manalet, running back towards us, “the Governor is going through the town with a lot of people and banners; the ladies are singing in front, and the monks dancing, and the bishop smiling, and the nuns crying. Come along!”

And like a flock of birds the band of children ran down the street.

_Gerona_: “_Episodios Nacionales._” _Perez Galdos._

_FIRST LOVE._

How old I was then? Eleven or twelve years? More probably thirteen, for before then is too early to be seriously in love; but I won’t venture to be certain, considering that in Southern countries the heart matures early, if that organ is to blame for such perturbations.

If I do not remember well _when_, I can at least say exactly _how_ my love first revealed itself. I was very fond—as soon as my aunt had gone to church to perform her evening devotions—of slipping into her bedroom and rummaging her chest of drawers, which she kept in admirable order. Those drawers were to me a museum; in them I always came across something rare or antique, which exhaled an archaic and mysterious scent, the aroma of the sandalwood fans which perfumed her white linen. Pincushions of satin now faded; knitted mittens, carefully wrapped in tissue paper; prints of saints; sewing materials; a reticule of blue velvet embroidered with bugles, an amber and silver rosary would appear from the corners: I used to ponder over them, and return them to their place. But one day—I remember as well as if it were to-day—in the corner of the top drawer, and lying on some collars of old lace, I saw something gold glittering.... I put in my hand, unwittingly crumpled the lace, and drew out a portrait, an ivory miniature, about three inches long, in a frame of gold.

I was struck at first sight. A sunbeam streamed through the window and fell upon the alluring form, which seemed to wish to step out of its dark background and come towards me. It was a most lovely creature, such as I had never seen except in the dreams of my adolescence. The lady of the portrait must have been some twenty-odd years; she was no simple maiden, no half-opened rosebud, but a woman in the full resplendency of her beauty. Her face was oval, but not too long, her lips full, half-open and smiling, her eyes cast a languishing side-glance, and she had a dimple on her chin as if formed by the tip of Cupid’s playful finger. Her head-dress was strange but elegant; a compact group of curls plastered conewise one over the other covered her temples, and a basket of braided hair rose on the top of her head. This old-fashioned head-dress, which was trussed up from the nape of her neck, disclosed all the softness of her fresh young throat, on which the dimple of her chin was reduplicated more vaguely and delicately. As for the dress ... I do not venture to consider whether our grandmothers were less modest than our wives are, or if the confessors of past times were more indulgent than those of the present; I am inclined to think the latter, for seventy years ago women prided themselves upon being Christianlike and devout, and would not have disobeyed the director of their conscience in so grave and important a matter. What is undeniable is, that if in the present day any lady were to present herself in the garb of the lady of the portrait, there would be a scandal; for from her waist (which began at her armpits) upwards, she was only veiled by light folds of diaphanous gauze, which marked out, rather than covered, two mountains of snow, between which meandered a thread of pearls. With further lack of modesty she stretched out two rounded arms worthy of Juno, ending in finely-moulded hands ... when I say _hands_ I am not exact, for, strictly speaking, only one hand could be seen, and that held a richly embroidered handkerchief.

Even to-day I am astonished at the startling effect which the contemplation of that miniature produced upon me, and how I remained in ecstasy, scarcely breathing, devouring the portrait with my eyes. I had already seen here and there prints representing beautiful women: it often happened that in the illustrated papers, in the mythological engravings of our dining-room, or in a shop-window, that a beautiful face, or a harmonious and graceful figure attracted my precociously artistic gaze; but the miniature encountered in my aunt’s drawer, apart from its great beauty, appeared to me as if animated by a subtle and vital breath; you could see it was not the caprice of a painter, but the image of a real and actual person of flesh and blood. The warm and rich tone of the tints made you surmise that the blood was tepid beneath that mother-of-pearl skin. The lips were slightly parted to disclose the enamelled teeth; and to complete the illusion there ran round the frame a border of natural hair, chestnut in colour, wavy and silky, which had grown on the temples of the original. As I have said, it was more than a copy, it was the reflection of a living person from whom I was only separated by a wall of glass.... I seized it, breathed upon it, and it seemed to me that the warmth of the mysterious deity communicated itself to my lips and circulated through my veins. At this moment I heard footsteps in the corridor. It was my aunt returning from her prayers. I heard her asthmatic cough, and the dragging of her gouty feet. I had only just time to put the miniature into the drawer, shut it, and approach the window, adopting an innocent and indifferent attitude.

My aunt entered noisily, for the cold of the church had exasperated her catarrh, now chronic. Upon seeing me, her wrinkled little eyes brightened, and giving me a friendly tap with her withered hand, she asked me if I had been turning over her drawers as usual.

Then, with a chuckle—

“Wait a bit, wait a bit,” she added, “I have something for you, something you will like.”

And she pulled out of her vast pocket a paper bag, and out of the bag three or four gum lozenges, sticking together in a cake, which gave me a feeling of nausea.

My aunt’s appearance did not invite one to open one’s mouth and devour these sweets: the course of years, her loss of teeth, her eyes dimmed to an unusual degree, the sprouting of a moustache or bristles on her sunken-in mouth, which was three inches wide, dull grey locks fluttering above her sallow temples, a neck flaccid and livid as the crest of the turkey when in a good temper.... In short, I did not take the lozenges. Ugh! A feeling of indignation, a manly protest rose in me, and I said forcibly—

“I do not want it, I don’t want it.”

“You don’t want it? What a wonder! You who are greedier than a cat!”

“I am not a little boy,” I exclaimed, drawing myself up, and standing on tip-toes; “I don’t care for sweets.”

My aunt looked at me half good-humouredly and half ironically, and at last, giving way to the feeling of amusement I caused her, burst out laughing, by which she disfigured herself, and exposed the horrible anatomy of her jaws. She laughed so heartily that her chin and nose met, hiding her lips, and emphasising two wrinkles, or rather two deep furrows, and more than a dozen lines on her cheeks and eyelids; at the same time her head and body shook with the laughter, until at last her cough began to interrupt the bursts, and between laughing and coughing the old lady involuntarily spluttered all over my face.... Humiliated, and full of disgust, I escaped rapidly thence to my mother’s room, where I washed myself with soap and water, and began to muse on the lady of the portrait.

And from that day and hour I could not keep my thoughts from her. As soon as my aunt went out, to slip into her room, open the drawer, bring out the miniature, and lose myself in contemplation, was the work of a minute. By dint of looking at it, I fancied that her languishing eyes, through the voluptuous veiling of her eyelashes, were fixed in mine, and that her white bosom heaved. I became ashamed to kiss her, imagining she would be annoyed at my audacity, and only pressed her to my heart or held her against my cheek. All my actions and thoughts referred to the lady; I behaved towards her with the most extraordinary refinement and super-delicacy. Before entering my aunt’s room and opening the longed-for drawer, I washed, combed my hair, and tidied myself, as I have seen since is usually done before repairing to a love appointment. I often happened to meet in the street other boys of my age, very proud of their slip of a sweetheart, who would exultingly show me love-letters, photographs, and flowers, and who asked me if I hadn’t a sweetheart with whom to correspond. A feeling of inexplicable bashfulness tied my tongue, and I only replied with an enigmatic and haughty smile. And when they questioned me as to what I thought of the beauty of their little maidens, I would shrug my shoulders and disdainfully call them _ugly mugs_. One Sunday I went to play in the house of some little girl-cousins, really very pretty, and the elder of whom was not yet fifteen.

We were amusing ourselves looking into a stereoscope, when suddenly one of the little girls, the youngest, who counted twelve summers at most, secretly seized my hand, and in some confusion and blushing as red as a brazier, whispered in my ear—

“Take this.”

At the same time I felt in the palm of my hand some thing soft and fresh, and saw that it was a rosebud with its green foliage. The little girl ran away smiling and casting a side-glance at me; but I, with a Puritanism worthy of Joseph, cried out in my turn—

“Take this!”

And I threw the rosebud at her nose, a rebuff which made her tearful and pettish with me the whole afternoon, and which she has not pardoned me even now, though she is married and has three children.

The two or three hours which my aunt spent morning and evening together at church being too short for my admiration of the entrancing portrait, I resolved at last to keep the miniature in my pocket, and went about all day hiding myself from people just as if I had committed a crime. I fancied that the portrait from the depth of its prison of cloth could see all my actions, and I arrived at such a ridiculous extremity, that if I wanted to scratch myself, pull up my sock, or do anything else not in keeping with the idealism of my chaste love, I first drew out the miniature, put it in a safe place, and then considered myself free to do whatever I wanted. In fact, since I had accomplished the theft, there was no limit to my vagaries; at night I hid it under the pillow, and slept in an attitude of defence; the portrait remained near the wall, I outside, and I awoke a thousand times, fearing somebody would come to bereave me of my treasure. At last I drew it from beneath the pillow and slipped it between my nightshirt and left breast, on which the following day could be seen the imprint of the chasing of the frame.

The contact of the dear miniature gave me delicious dreams. The lady of the portrait, not in effigy, but in her natural size and proportions, alive, graceful, affable, beautiful, would come towards me to conduct me to her palace by a rapid and flying train. With sweet authority she would make me sit on a stool at her feet, and would pass her beautifully moulded hand over my head, caressing my brow, my eyes, and loose curls. I read to her out of a big missal, or played the lute, and she deigned to smile, thanking me for the pleasure which my reading and songs gave her. At last romantic reminiscences overflowed in my brain, and sometimes I was a page, and sometimes a troubadour.

With all these fanciful ideas, the fact is, that I began to grow thin quite perceptibly, which was observed with great disquietude by my parents and my aunt.

“In this dangerous and critical age of development, everything is alarming,” said my father, who used to read books of medicine, and anxiously studied my dark eyelids, my dull eyes, my contracted and pale lips, and above all, the complete lack of appetite which had taken possession of me.

“Play, boy; eat, boy,” he would say to me, and I replied to him dejectedly—

“I don’t feel inclined.”

They began to talk of distractions, offered to take me to the theatre; stopped my studies, and gave me foaming new milk to drink. Afterwards they poured cold water over my head and back to fortify my nerves; and I noticed that my father at table or in the morning when I went to his bedroom to bid him good morning, would gaze at me fixedly for some little time, and would sometimes pass his hand down my spine, feeling the vertebræ. I hypocritically lowered my eyes, resolved to die rather than confess my crime. As soon as I was free from the affectionate solicitude of my family, I found myself alone with my lady of the portrait. At last, to get nearer to her, I thought I would do away with the cold crystal. I trembled upon putting this into execution; but at last my love prevailed over the vague fear with which such a profanation filled me, and with skilful cunning I succeeded in pulling away the glass and exposing the ivory plate. As I pressed my lips to the painting and could scent the slight fragrance of the border of hair, I imagined to myself even more realistically that it was a living person whom I was grasping with my trembling hands. A feeling of faintness overpowered me, and I fell unconscious on the sofa, tightly holding the miniature.

When I came to my senses I saw my father, my mother, and my aunt, all bending anxiously over me; I read their terror and alarm in their faces: my father was feeling my pulse, shaking his head, and murmuring—

“His pulse is nothing but a flutter, you can scarcely feel it.”

My aunt, with her claw-like fingers was trying to take the portrait from me, and I was mechanically hiding it and grasping it more firmly.

“But, my dear boy.... Let go, you are spoiling it!” she exclaimed. “Do you see you are smudging it? I am not scolding you, my dear.... I will show it to you as often as you like, but don’t destroy it; let go, you are injuring it.”

“Let him have it,” begged my mother, “the boy is not well.”

“Of all things to ask!” replied the old maid. “Let him have it! And who will paint another like this ... or make me as I was then? To-day nobody paints miniatures ... it is a thing of the past, and I also am a thing of the past, and I am not what is represented there!”

My eyes dilated with horror; my fingers released their hold on the picture. I don’t know how I was able to articulate—

“You ... the portrait ... is you...?”

“Don’t you think I am as pretty now, boy? Bah! one is better looking at twenty-three than at ... than at ... I don’t know what, for I have forgotten how old I am!”

My head drooped and I almost fainted again; anyway, my father lifted me in his arms on to the bed, and made me swallow some tablespoons of port.

* * * * *

I recovered very quickly, and never wished to enter my aunt’s room again.

_Emilia Pardo Bazan_ (_Nineteenth Century_).

_THE ACCOUNT BOOK._

A RURAL TALE.

Gaffer Buscabeatas was already beginning to stoop at the time when the events occurred which I am going to relate; for he was now sixty years old, and of these sixty years he had spent forty cultivating a garden bordering on the shore of La Costilla.

In the year in question he had cultivated in this garden some wonderful pumpkins, as large as the ornamental globes on the breastwork of some massive bridge, that at the time of our story were beginning to turn yellow, inside and out, which is the same as saying that it was the middle of June. Old Buscabeatas knew by heart the particular form and the stage of maturity at which it had arrived of every one of these pumpkins, to each of which he had given a name, and especially of the forty largest and finest specimens, which were already crying out, “Cook me!” and he spent the days contemplating them affectionately, and saying in melancholy accents—

“Soon we shall have to part!”

At last, one evening, he made up his mind to the sacrifice, and marking out the best fruits of those beloved vines which had cost him so many anxieties, he pronounced the dreadful sentence—

“To-morrow,” he said, “I shall cut from their stalks these forty pumpkins and take them to the market at Cadiz. Happy the man who shall eat of them!”

And he returned to his home with slow step and spent the night in such anguish as a father may be supposed to feel on the eve of his daughter’s wedding-day.

“What a pity to have to part from my dear pumpkins!” he would sigh from time to time in his restless vigil. But presently he would reason with himself and end his reflections by saying, “And what else can I do but sell them? That is what I have raised them for. The least they will bring me is fifteen dollars!”

Judge, then, what was his consternation, what his rage and despair, on going into the garden on the following morning, to find that during the night he had been robbed of his forty pumpkins! Not to weary the reader, I will only say that his emotion, like that of Shakespeare’s Jew, so admirably represented, it is said, by the actor Kemble, reached the sublimity of tragedy as he frantically cried—

“Oh, if I could but find the thief! If I could but find the thief!”

Poor old Buscabeatas presently began to reflect upon the matter with calmness, and comprehended that his beloved treasures could not be in Rota, where it would be impossible to expose them for sale without risk of their being recognised, and where, besides, vegetables bring a very low price.

“I know as well as if I saw them, that they are in Cadiz!” he ended. “The scoundrel! the villain! the thief must have stolen them between nine and ten o’clock last night, and got off with them at midnight on the freight-boat. I shall go to Cadiz this morning on the hour-boat, and it will surprise me greatly if I do not catch the thief there, and recover the children of my toil.”

After he had thus spoken, he remained for some twenty minutes longer on the scene of the catastrophe, whether to caress the mutilated vines, to calculate the number of pumpkins that were missing, or to formulate a declaration of the loss sustained, for a possible suit; then, at about eight o’clock, he bent his steps in the direction of the wharf.

The hour-boat was just going to sail. This was a modest coaster which leaves Cadiz every morning at nine lock precisely, carrying passengers, as the freight-boat leaves Cadiz every night at twelve, laden with fruits and vegetables.

The former is called the hour-boat because in that space of time, and occasionally even in forty minutes, if the wind is favourable, it makes the three leagues which separate the ancient village of the Duke of Arcos from the ancient city of Hercules.

* * * * *

It was, then, half-past ten in the morning on the before-mentioned day, when old Buscabeatas passed before a vegetable-stand in the market of Cadiz, and said to the bored policeman who was accompanying him—

“Those are my squashes! arrest that man!” and he pointed to the vendor.

“Arrest me!” cried the vendor, astonished and enraged. “These squashes are mine; I bought them!”

“You will have to prove that before the judge!” answered old Buscabeatas.

“I say No!”

“I say Yes!”

“Thief!”

“Vagabond!”

“Speak more civilly, you ill-mannered fellows! Decent men ought not to treat one another in that way!” said the policeman tranquilly, giving a blow with his closed fist to each of the disputants.

By this time a crowd had gathered, and there soon arrived also on the scene the inspector of public markets.

The policeman resigned his jurisdiction in the case to his Honour, and when this worthy official had learned all the circumstances relating to the affair, he said to the vendor majestically—

“From whom did you purchase those squashes?”

“From Gossip Fulano, a native of Rota,” answered the person thus interrogated.

“It could be no one else!” cried old Buscabeatas. “He is just the one to do it! When his own garden, which is a very poor one, produces little, he takes to robbing the gardens of his neighbours!”

“But, admitting the supposition that forty pumpkins were stolen from you last night,” said the inspector, turning to the old gardener and proceeding with his examination, “how do you know that these are precisely your pumpkins?”

“How?” replied old Buscabeatas. “Because I know them as well as you know your daughters, if you have any! Don’t you see that they have grown up under my care? Look here: this one is called Roly-poly, this one Fat-cheeks, this one Big-belly, this one Ruddy-face, this Manuela, because it reminded me of my youngest daughter.”

And the poor old man began to cry bitterly.

“That may be all very well,” replied the inspector; “but it is not enough for the law that you should recognise your pumpkins. It is necessary also that the authorities be convinced of the pre-existence of the article in dispute, and that you identify it with incontrovertible proofs; gentlemen, there is no occasion for you to smile—I know the law!”

“You shall see, then, that I will very soon prove to the satisfaction of everybody present, without stirring from this spot, that these pumpkins have grown in my garden!” said old Buscabeatas, to the no little surprise of the spectators of this scene. And laying down on the ground a bundle which he had been carrying in his hand, he bent his knees until he sat upon his heels, and quietly began to untie the knotted corners of the handkerchief.

The curiosity of the inspector, the vendor, and the chorus was now at its height.

“What is he going to take out of that handkerchief?” they said to themselves.

At this moment a new spectator joined the crowd, curious to see what was going on, whom the vendor had no sooner perceived than he exclaimed—

“I am very glad that you have come, Gossip Fulano! This man declares that the squashes which you sold me last night, and which are now here present, listening to what we are saying about them, were stolen. Answer, you!”

The newcomer turned as yellow as wax, and made a movement as if to escape, but the bystanders detained him by force, and the inspector himself ordered him to remain. As for Gaffer Buscabeatas, he had already confronted the supposed thief, saying to him—

“Now you are going to see something good.”

Gossip Fulano, recovering his self-possession, answered—

“It is you who ought to see what you are talking about, for if you do not prove, as prove you cannot, your accusation, I shall have you put in prison for libel. These pumpkins were mine. I cultivated them, like all the others that I brought this year to Cadiz, in my garden, the Egido, and no one can prove to the contrary!”

“Now you shall see!” repeated old Buscabeatas, loosening the knots of the handkerchief and spreading out its contents on the ground.

And there were scattered over the floor a number of fragments of pumpkin stalks, still fresh and dripping sap, while the old gardener, seated on his heels and unable to control his laughter, addressed the following discourse to the inspector and the wondering bystanders.

“Gentlemen, have any of you ever paid taxes? If you have, you must have seen the big green book of the collector, from which he tears off your receipt, leaving the stub or end, so as to be able to prove afterward whether the receipt is genuine or not.”

“The book you mean is called the account-book,” said the inspector gravely.

“Well, that is what I have here—the account-book of my garden; that is to say, the stalks to which these pumpkins were attached before they were stolen from me. And in proof of what I say, look here! This stalk belongs to this pumpkin; no one can doubt it. This other—you can see for yourselves—belonged to this other. This is thicker—it must belong to this one. This to that one. This to that other.”

And as he spoke he went fitting a stub or peduncle to the hole which had been made in each pumpkin as it was pulled from the stalk, and the spectators saw with surprise that the irregular and capricious shaped ends of the peduncles corresponded exactly with the whitish circles and the slight hollows presented by what we might call the cicatrices of the pumpkins.

Every one present, including the policeman, and even the inspector himself, then got down on their heels and began to help old Buscabeatas in his singular comprobation, crying out with childlike delight—

“He is right! he is right! There is not a doubt of it! Look! This belongs to this one. This to that one. That one there belongs to this. This belongs to that!” And the bursts of laughter of the grown people were mingled with the whistling of the boys, the abuse of the women, the tears of joy and triumph of the old gardener, and the pushes that the policeman gave to the convicted thief, as if they were impatient to carry him off to prison.

Needless to say that the policeman had that pleasure; that Gossip Fulano was immediately compelled to restore to the vendor the fifteen dollars he had received from him, that the vendor handed these over at once to Gaffer Buscabeatas, and that the latter departed for Rota, highly delighted, although he kept repeating all the way home—

“How handsome they looked in the market! I should have brought Manuela back with me to eat at supper to-night, and save the seeds.”

“_Moors and Christians, and other Tales._” _Pedro Antonio de Alarcon_ (1833-1891). _Trans. Mary J. Serrano._

_SISTER SAINT SULPICE._

SISTER SULPICE (_Gloria, by her mundane name_), _a novice about to quit the convent for the world, against her mother, Doña Tula’s, wish_.

SISTER MARIA DE LA LUZ, _cousin to Sister Sulpice, and also a novice_.

THE MOTHER SUPERIOR FLORENTINA.

PACA, _Glori foster-sister_.

DON CEFERINO, _native of Galicia_.

DON PACO, _landlord of the Fonda Continental_.

I. AT THE MARMOLEYO SPA.

Along a gentle slope, over which was intended to be a high-road, we descended to the spring which gushes out in the very middle of the river Guadalquivir, which comes circling around the brow of the sierra. There is a gallery or bridge which leads from the shore to the spring. Across it were gravely walking two or three persons, who, by their wandering and vacant looks, showed that they were perhaps paying more attention to the contents of their stomachs than to the discourse and steps of their companions. From time to time they hastened to the spring, descended the steps, asked for a glass of water, and drank it eagerly, shutting their eyes with a kind of pleasurable emotion, suggesting the hope of health.

“Have you been taking much of the water, Mother?” asked my landlord, leaning over the railing of the well.

A short, plump nun, who appeared to be dropsical, and had a small red nose, raised her head just as she was about to put the glass to her lips.

“Good morning, Señor Paco.... I have had only four glasses so far. Would you like a little to increase your appetite?”

That greatly delighted my landlord.

“Increase my appetite, eh? Give me something to reduce it, rather! that’s what I should prefer.... And the Sisters?”

Two young nuns, not at all ill-favoured, who were standing beside the other with their heads raised towards us, smiled politely.

“The same as always; two little sips,” rejoined one of them, who had lively black eyes, and spoke with a downright Andalusian accent, and displayed an elegant set of teeth.

“How little!”

“Why, surely you would not wish to make our stomachs ponds for anchovies, would you, like the Mother’s?”

“Anchovies?”

“Yes, Cadiz anchovies. You have only to cast the net.”

The Mother’s dropsical form was shaken violently by a laughing fit. The anchovies swimming in her stomach, according to the young nun, must have thought that they were exposed to an earthquake.

We all laughed and went down to the spring. As we came near the Mother, she greeted me with an affectionate smile. I bent low, took the crucifix which hung from her girdle, and kissed it. The nun smiled still more tenderly, and looked at me with an expression of generous sympathy.

Let us be explicit: if this book is to be an honest history or confession of my life, it is my duty to declare that by the act of bending over to kiss the metal crucifix, I do not think that I was actuated by any mystic impulse, rather, I suspect, that the pretty Sister’s black eyes shrewdly fixed upon me had a very active part in it. Perhaps, without being aware of it, I desired to ingratiate myself with those eyes. And the truth is that I failed in my attempt; because, instead of showing that she was flattered by such an act of devotion, it seemed to me that they assumed a slight expression of mockery. I was a bit confused.

“Has the gentleman come to take the waters?” asked the Mother half directly, half indirectly.

“Yes, señora, I have just arrived from Madrid.”

“They are wonderful! The Lord our God has given them a virtue which is almost beyond belief. You will see how they develop the appetite. You will eat as much as you possibly can, and it will not hurt you.... You see, I can say I am a different woman, and it is only a week since we came.... Just imagine! yesterday I ate pig’s liver, and it did not hurt me at all.... Then this young girl,” she added, pointing to the black-eyed Sister: “I can’t tell you what a colour she had! She was as pale as ashes. To be sure she hasn’t much colour yet, but, ... there now, ... that is another thing.”

I looked at her closely, and noticed that she was blushing, though she instantly turned her back to get another glass of water.

She was a young woman of nineteen or twenty, of average height, with an oval face of a pale brunette, her nose slightly “tip-tilted,” her teeth white and close, and her eyes, as I have already said, of an intense and velvety black, shaded by long lashes, and bordered by a slight pink circle. Her hair was entirely covered from sight by the hood that bound her forehead. She was dressed in black serge, with a girdle around her waist, from which hung a large bronze crucifix. On her head, beside the hood, she wore a great white _papalina_, or “coronet,” with stiffly starched flaps. Her shoes were large and coarse, but could not wholly disguise the grace of her dainty Southern foot.

The other Sister was likewise young, perhaps even younger than the first, as well as shorter in stature, and with a lily-white face, showing under the transparent skin an exceedingly lymphatic temperament; her eyes were clear blue, her teeth somewhat faulty. By the purity and correctness of her features, and likewise by her quiet manners, she looked like a Virgin of painted wood. She kept her eyes constantly fixed upon the ground, and did not open her lips during the short moments that we were together there.

“Come, drink, señor, prove the Divine grace,” said the Mother.

I took the glass which the Sister with the white teeth had just laid down, and proceeded to fill it with water, since the attendant had disappeared through a trap-door; but in doing so I had to lean on the rock, and when I bent over to dip the glass into the pool I slipped, and my foot went in above my ankle.

“Be careful!” simultaneously cried my landlord and the Mother, as is always said after one has met with any accident.

I drew out my foot with the water spurting from my shoe, and could not refrain from a rather energetic exclamation.

The Mother was disturbed, and hastened to ask me with a grave face—

“Did it hurt you?”

The little Sister of the transparent skin blushed up to her ears. The other began to laugh so heartily, that I gave her a quick and not very affectionate look. But she paid no heed to it; she continued to laugh, although, in order not to meet my eyes, she turned her face the other way.

“Sister San Sulpicio, remember that it is a sin to laugh at another’s misfortunes,” said the Mother. “Why do you not imitate Sister Maria de la Luz?”

The latter was blushing like a poppy.

“I can’t help it, Mother, I cannot; excuse me,” she replied, endeavouring, but without success, to contain herself.

“Let her laugh; the truth is, the thing is more ludicrous than serious,” said I, affecting good-humour though angry at heart.

These words, instead of inciting the Sister, had the opposite effect, and she quickly grew calm. I looked at her now and then, with a curiosity mingled with annoyance. She returned my look with a frank and smiling eye, in which still lurked a trace of mockery.

“You must change your shoes and stockings as quick as you can; getting the feet wet is very bad,” said the Mother with interest.

“Pshaw! I shall not change them till night. I am accustomed to go all day with my feet soaking,” said I, in a scornful tone of voice, putting on a show of robustness, which, unfortunately, I am very far from being blessed with. But it pleased me to affect bravado before the smiling nun.

“By all means ... go, go home and take off your stocking. We are going to walk across the gallery to see if the water is going down. May the Lord our God bless you!”

I once more made a low bow and kissed the Mother’s crucifix. I did the same with Sister Maria’s, who, of course, blushed again. As to Sister San Sulpicio’s I refrained from touching it. I merely bowed low with a grave face. Thus should she learn not to laugh at people when they get wet.

II. IN SEVILLE.

... When I returned to my boarding-house to dinner, I found Paca waiting at the door to give me a letter. I did not care to open it before the messenger, and tried to dismiss her as soon as possible. But the worthy woman was too happy over her señorita’s escape from the convent, not to chatter for a while. Both interested and impatient, I was treated to all the particulars; how Doña Tula had gone to get Gloria in her carriage; how abominably they had behaved towards her at the convent, no one except the chaplain coming to bid her good-bye; how happy her señorita felt to take off her nun’s dress; how glad every one was to see her “so bright and chipper!” and all the insignificant words which they had exchanged in their talk.

At last she went away, and I hastened to my room, nervously lighted my candle, and opened the note.

“I am out of the convent,” it read. “If you wish to receive the promised scolding, pass in front of my house at eleven o’clock. I will be at the grating, and we will have a talk.”

The keen joy produced in me by that letter may be imagined. All my dreams were coming true at once. Gloria loved me, and was giving me a rendezvous, and this rendezvous was singularly attractive to a poet and a man of the North by being at the grating!

The grating—_la reja_![15] Does not this word exert a strange fascination? does it not awake in fancy a swarm of vague, sweet thoughts, as though it were the symbol and centre of love and poesy? Who is there with so little imagination as never to have dreamed of a talk with a loved one through the grating on a moonlight night? These talks and these nights have, moreover, the incalculable advantage that they can be described without an actual experience of them. There is not a lyrical mosquito among all those that hum and buzz in the central or septentrional provinces of Spain who has not given expression to his feelings concerning them, and framed a more or less harmonious structure with the sweet notes of the guitar, the scents of tube-roses, the moonlight scattering its delicate filaments of silver over the windows, the heavens bespangled with stars, the orange flowers, the maiden’s fascinating eyes, her warm perfumed breath, &c.

I myself, as a descriptive poet and colourist, have on more than one occasion, to the applause of my friends, jumbled together these commonplaces of Andalusian æsthetics.

But now the reality far exceeded and differed from this poetic conventionalism. For the time being, as I entered the Calle de Argote de Molina, at eleven o’clock, I failed to notice whether moon and stars were shining in the sky or not. It is quite possible that they were, for such things are natural; but I did not notice. What could be seen with perfect distinctness was the watchman with pike and lantern leaning up against a door not very far from Gloria’s.

“Shall I have to wait till this fellow goes off?” I asked myself with a sudden pang of fear.

Fortunately, after a little while I saw him start away from that place and move up the street.

Moreover, I went to the trysting-place without guitar or cloak, merely with a jonquil in my hand, and wearing a plain and inoffensive jacket. Neither did I go mounted on a fiery steed, black, dappled, or sorrel; but on my own wretched legs, which certainly trembled all too violently as I approached the windows of the house. In one of them I saw the gleam of a white object, and I hastened to tap on the grating.

“Gloria!” I said in a very low voice.

“Here I am,” replied the girl’s voice.

At the same instant her graceful bare head bent over toward the grating, and I saw the gleam of her little white teeth with that same bewitching and mocking smile which was so delineated on my heart. I saw her dark velvety eyes shining. As though I were in the presence of a supernatural apparition, I stood motionless with both hands clenching the grating. I found nothing more to say than—

“Còmo sigue V.” “How do you do?”

That ordinary formula of every-day courtesy did not seem to arouse any sad ideas in her, for I saw her put her hand to her mouth to hide a laugh. After a brief silence, she replied—

“Well; and you?”

“How I have longed for this moment to arrive!” I exclaimed, realising that I was not “in situation,” as they say in the theatres. “Can you not imagine the eagerness with which I have been waiting for it, Gloria?...”

“And why should you have been anxious for it?”

“Because my heart was tormented with the desire to tell you how I worship you.”

“That indeed is news! Why, my son, you have repeated it in the nine letters you have written me, forty-one times.... I counted them!”

“Then it was so as to tell you so the forty-second time. What is taking place between us, Gloria, seems to me just like a novel. It is not three months that I have known you, and yet it seems to me as if I had lived three years since then. What a change! How it has altered our lives! You were a nun, and now I see you transformed into a perfect young lady of the world.”

“So you really find that I am perfect?”

“Exquisite!”

“A thousand thanks. What would it be if you were to see me!”

“I do see you ... not very well, but sufficient to make me realise what a favourable change.”

Up to a certain point that was true. Although the darkness that prevailed in that corner did not allow me to make out her features, I could see the outline of her graceful head, adorned with waving hair, and when she bent it over a little toward the grating, the dim light of the street shone into her face, which seemed to me paler than when she was at Marmolejo, though not less lovely.

A moment of silence ensued, and, embarrassed by it, I said at last—

“Is this your chamber?”

“This is not a chamber, it is the reception-room.”

“Ah!”

And again silence fell.

I noticed that her eyes were fastened upon me, and, if the truth be told, I could not deceive myself into thinking that they were overflowing with love, but rather that they displayed a mischievous curiosity.

“O Gloria, if you only knew how sadly those days passed for me when I got no word from you! I believed that you had forgotten me.”

“I never forget my good friends. Besides, I had promised you one thing, and I should certainly not wish to fail of fulfilling my promise.”

“What was it?”

“Do you remember?—the scolding....”

“Oh, yes,” I exclaimed, laughing.

And, encouraged by these words, I felt that I ought to have my love affairs put upon a definite basis, and I said—

“Well, then, Gloria, I have come for nothing else than to have you undeceive me if I am under a false impression, or else confirm my hopes of being loved if they have any foundation. Since I have already repeated forty-one times that I adore you, as you say, I need not say it again. Ever since I have seen you and talked with you at Marmolejo, you have kept me a willing prisoner of love and admiration. My fate is in your hands, and I wait with the greatest anxiety to hear my sentence.”

Gloria paused a few moments before she answered; then she coughed a little, and finally said—

“The fatal moment has arrived. Prepare for the worst.... Señor Don Ceferino, I should not tell the truth if I gave you to understand that from the first day I talked with you at Marmolejo, I did not perceive that you were courting me. Further, I believe that the kiss which you gave Mother Florentina’s crucifix, the first time we saw each other, you gave me in my honour.... You laugh? Well, it shows that I was not deceived. Those gallantries of yours have caused me some annoyances, but I cherish no hard feelings against you. Sooner or later I had to let the thunder burst, for I had made up my mind not to stay in the convent, even though I had to go out to service. Then you greatly aided me in accomplishing my wishes, and for this I am very grateful.... But gratitude is one thing and love is another. So far I have not been able to reciprocate your love. I esteem you ... I like you, and I shall never forget how kind you have been to me; but I speak frankly, I cannot have you live longer labouring under a mistake. I will be your sincere and affectionate friend.... Your betrothed I cannot be.”

It is absolutely impossible for me to give any idea of my state of mind on hearing those words. They were spoken in an ironical tone, which might have left one open to think that they were in jest, but the reasoning was so natural and logical that they put an end to any such supposition. Nevertheless, by a supreme act of self-control, I burst into a laugh, exclaiming—

“Well, that is a well-fabricated refusal! I might think that you really meant it!”

“What! don’t you believe what I say?... Child, have you not a very lofty opinion of your little self?”

“It is not a question of whether I have a high opinion of myself, Gloria,” I replied, becoming grave; “it is that it is hard to believe that you would have waited so long to refuse me.”

“But you have not given me a chance till now!”

“Are you speaking seriously, Gloria?”

“Why not? Come, now, you have imagined because I accepted your aid in getting out of the convent, that I was in so far bound to worship you, did you not?”

A wave of hot blood surged into my cheeks; my ears hummed. I suddenly realised the fact that I had been making a fool of myself in a most lamentable fashion, that this girl had most shamefully turned me into ridicule. Indignation and anger took complete possession of me; I poured out all my bile in a perfect torrent of words. I stood for some little time clutching the grating, gazing at her in silence with flaming eyes. Finally, in a voice hoarse with anger, I said,—

“The truth is, you are the veriest flirt,[16] unworthy of receiving the attentions of any decent man. I do not regret the time that I have wasted in loving you, but I do regret having wasted my love on you! I believed that under your apparent frivolity you had a good heart, but I see that it was nothing but vanity and giddiness. I rejoice that I have found it out in good time, for I will at one blow tear it out of my heart and my thoughts, where you ought never to have found a place. Good-bye! and for ever!”

As I withdrew my contracted hands from the iron bars I felt the pressure of hers, and I heard a compressed laugh, which entirely confused me.

“Bravo, bravo? I like you so, my dear! I was becoming weary of so much sweetness!”

“What does this mean, Gloria?”

“It means that you must not be so honey-like, for one gets tired of syrup, and incense is sickening. See here! You have advanced your cause more in one moment by saying impudent things to me, than in three months of flatteries. You will say that I like to have my knuckles rapped with the fire-shovel. It may be so. But I tell you that a little touch of genius never hurts a man!”

“Yes? Then wait a bit, and I will insult you some more,” said I, laughing.

“No, no,” she exclaimed, also laughing, “enough for to-day.”

During that sweet and memorable interview, which was prolonged till one o’clock, our love was mutually confessed and agreed upon. Without any difficulty we began to address each other with the familiar “thee” and “thou,” and we swore fidelity till death, no matter what might happen.

Not a soul passed through the street. The watchman, when he saw me glued to the grating, did not come near. I was afraid that Doña Tula might come into the room, but Gloria re-assured me by declaring that in Seville no one ever acted traitorously towards two lovers, and the watchmen still less interfered with these colloquies at the gratings, which they saw every night. She also had great confidence in the servants. Therefore the prospect of a series of delightful interviews was spread before us, filling my soul with joy.

“They will know about it sooner or later,” said she. “But suppose they do. I will take it upon me to make them mind their own business if they attempt to interfere.”

And in her handsome eyes I saw a flash of audacious mischief, which made it plain enough that it would not be an easy matter to lead her in paths where she did not wish to go.

“Now it is getting late. Mamma gets up very early for mass, and will wish me to go with her. Now you must go.”

“A little while longer, sweetheart! It is not midnight yet.”

“Yes, the clock in the Giralda[17] struck one.”

“No, it is only a quarter-past twelve....”

The slow, solemn stroke of the bell in the Giralda just then struck a quarter-past one.

“Do you hear? It is a quarter-past one. Adios! adios!”

“And are you going to send me off so, without giving me your hand?”

She reached it out to me, and I, naturally, was about to kiss it, but she snatched it away.

“No, no; wait a little, I will give you the crucifix, as in Marmolejo,” she cried with a laugh.

“I prefer your hand.”

“You heretic, begone!”

“God is everywhere. But still if you wish to give me the crucifix I will guard it carefully as a keepsake.”

“Wait just a second. I have my dress here.”

She withdrew from the window for a moment and came back with the bronze crucifix, which she handed out to me through the iron grating. In taking it from her I got possession of her brown, firm hand, and kissed it a number of times voraciously, gluttonously!

“That will do, little boy. Do you expect to keep it up till morning?”

I went away from that window grating intoxicated with love and bliss. So far gone was I that when I met the watchman a little distance away I gave him two pesetas. Afterwards I regretted it, for there was no need of doing so, according to what Gloria had said. This time, also, I noticed as little as before whether the stars were glittering on high with sweet brilliancy, or whether the moonlight filtered down into the dark labyrinthine streets, spotting them here and there with patines of bright silver. I carried in my own heart a radiant sun, which dazzled me and prevented me from seeing such petty details!

III. A VISIT TO THE CONVENT.

... During all this time neither the Mother Superior nor the sisters had asked who I was, or how and why Gloria happened to be in that place. They looked at me with quick glances of curiosity, showing that my presence embarrassed them. I had not opened my lips.

My wife, doubtless piqued by this neglect, suddenly said, “Did you not know that I was married?”

The sisters burst into a laugh.

“Ay! what a Sister!—always so full of spirit,” exclaimed the Mother Superior.

“Yes, Mother, I have been married for a month and three days to this fine young man whom you see. He has only one defect,” she added, growing grave, “and that is that he is a Gallegan!... But you would not think it, would you?”

“What a Sister!” again exclaimed some of the nuns. “How witty she is!—who would have said that she was married! Something has happened to her!”

“What! Don’t you believe me?”

The Sisters still laughed, giving me keen and mysterious glances.

“Well, then, this very instant I will prove it to you!” exclaimed my wife with a sudden impulse. And at the same time she threw her arms around my neck and began to give me some ringing kisses on the cheek, saying,—

“_Rico mio!_ Isn’t it true that you are my husband? Isn’t it true that I am your little wife? Isn’t it true that we are married? Tell me, sweetheart! Tell me, my own life!”

While I, quite abashed, was trying to escape from her caresses, I heard exclamations of reproof, and saw that the nuns were flying in fright towards the portal. One of them, more intrepid, seized the cord of the curtain and pulled it with all her force. The curtain, as it shut together, likewise sent up a squeak of scandalised amazement.

I heard hurried steps and a sound of voices. Then nothing; it had grown silent.

My wife, laughing merrily and blushing at the same time, seized my hand and drew me out. We passed through the melancholy corridors in this way, ran down the stairs, passed through the great passageway, and when we found ourselves in the street I said to her, half vexed, “Child, how crazy you were! What got into you, to....”

“Forgive me, my dear,” she replied, still laughing and crimson. “They made me nervous. They might as well know that we were married as the priest who gave us his benediction.”

_A. Palacio Valdés_ (_Nineteenth Century_). _Trans. Nathan Haskell Dole._

_PEPITA._

In the past few days I have had occasion to practise patience in an extreme degree, and to mortify my self-love in the most cruel manner. My father, wishing to return Pepita’s compliment of the garden-party, invited her to visit his villa at the Pozo de la Solana. The excursion took place on the 22nd of April. I shall not soon forget the date.

The Pozo de la Solana is about two leagues distant from the village, and the only road to it is a bridle-path. We all had to go on horseback. As I never learned to ride, I had on former occasions accompanied my father mounted on a pacing mule, gentle, and, according to the expression of Dientes the muleteer, as good as gold, and of easier motion than a carriage. On the journey to the Pozo de la Solana I went in the same manner.

My father, the notary, the apothecary, and my cousin Currito were mounted on good horses. My aunt, Doña Casilda, who weighs more than two hundred and fifty pounds, rode on a large and powerful donkey, seated in a commodious side-saddle. The reverend vicar rode a gentle and easy mule like mine.

As for Pepita Jiménez, who, I supposed, would go also mounted on a donkey, in the same sort of easy saddle as my aunt—for I was ignorant that she knew how to ride—she surprised me by making her appearance on a black and white horse full of fire and spirit. She wore a riding-habit, and managed her horse with admirable grace and skill.

I was pleased to see Pepita look so charming on horseback, but I soon began to foresee and to be mortified by the sorry part I would play, jogging on in the rear beside my corpulent Aunt Casilda and the vicar, all three as quiet and tranquil as if we were seated in a carriage, while the gay cavalcade in front would caracole, gallop, trot, and make a thousand other displays of their horsemanship.

I fancied on the instant that there was something of compassion in Pepita’s glance as she noted the pitiable appearance I no doubt presented, seated on my mule. My cousin Currito looked at me with a mocking smile, and immediately began to make fun of me and to tease me.

Confess that I deserve credit for my resignation and courage. I submitted to everything with a good grace, and Currito’s jests soon ceased when he saw that I was invulnerable to them. But what did I not suffer in secret! The others, now trotting, now galloping, rode in advance of us, both in going and returning. The vicar and I, with Doña Casilda between us, rode on, tranquil as the mules we were seated upon, without hastening or retarding our pace.

I had not even the consolation of chatting with the vicar, in whose conversation I find so much pleasure, nor of wrapping myself up in my own thoughts and giving the rein to my fancy, nor of silently admiring the beauty of the scenery around us. Doña Casilda is gifted with an abominable loquacity, and we were obliged to listen to her. She told us all there is to be told of the gossip of the village; she recounted to us all her accomplishments; she told us how to make sausages, brain-puddings, pastry, and innumerable other dishes and delicacies. There is no one, according to herself, who can rival her in matters pertaining to the kitchen, or to the dressing of hogs, but Antoñona, Pepita’s nurse, and now her housekeeper and general manager. I am already acquainted with this Antoñona, for she goes back and forth between her mistress’s house and ours with messages, and is in truth extremely handy—as loquacious as Aunt Casilda, but a great deal more discreet.

The scenery on the road to the Pozo de la Solana is charming, but my mind was so disturbed during our journey that I could not enjoy it. When we arrived at the villa and dismounted, I was relieved of a great load, as if it had been I who carried the mule, and not the mule who carried me.

We then proceeded on foot through the estate, which is magnificent, of varied character and extensive. There are vines, old and newly planted, all on the same property, producing more than five hundred bushels of grapes; olive-trees that yield to the same amount; and, finally, a grove of the most majestic oaks that are to be found in all Andalusia. The water of the Pozo de la Solana forms a clear and deep brook, at which all the birds of the neighbourhood come to drink, and on whose borders they are caught by hundreds, by means of reeds smeared with bird-lime, or of nets, in the centre of which are fastened a cord and a decoy. All this carried my thoughts back to the sports of my childhood, and to the many times that I too had gone to catch birds in the same manner.

Following the course of the brook, and especially in the ravines, are many poplars and other tall trees, which, together with the bushes and the shrubs, form a dark and labyrinthine wood. A thousand fragrant wild flowers grow there spontaneously, and it would, in truth, be difficult to imagine anything more secluded and sylvan, more solitary, peaceful, and silent than this spot. Even in the fervour of noonday, when the sun pours down his light in torrents from a heaven without a cloud, the mind experiences the same mysterious terror as visits it at times in the silent hours of the night. One can understand here the manner of life of the patriarchs of old, and of the primitive shepherds and heroes; and the visions and apparitions that appeared to them of nymphs, of gods, and of angels, in the midst of the noonday brightness.

As we walked through this thicket, there arrived a moment in which, I know not how, Pepita and I found ourselves alone together. The others had remained behind.

I felt a sudden thrill pass through me. For the first time, and in a place so solitary, I found myself alone with this woman; while my thoughts were still dwelling on the noontide apparitions, now sinister, now gracious, but always supernatural, vouchsafed to the men of remote ages.

Pepita had left the long skirt of her riding habit in the house, and now wore a short dress that did not interfere with the graceful ease of her movements. She had on her head a little Andalusian hat, which became her extremely. She carried in her hand her riding-whip, which I fancied to myself to be a magic wand, by means of which this enchantress might cast her spells over me.

I am not afraid to transcribe here these eulogies of her beauty. In this sylvan scene she appeared to me more beautiful than ever. The precaution recommended in similar cases by ascetics, to think of her beauty defaced by sickness and old age, to picture her to myself dead, the prey of corruption and of the worm, presented itself, against my will, to my imagination; and I say _against my will_, for I do not concur in the necessity for such a precaution. No thought of the material, no suggestion of the evil spirit, troubled my reason or infected my will or my senses.

What did occur to me was an argument—at least to my mind—in disproof of the efficacy of this precaution. Beauty, the creation of a Sovereign and Divine Power, may indeed be frail and ephemeral, may vanish in an instant; but the idea of beauty is eternal, and, once perceived by the mind, it lives there an immortal life. The beauty of this woman, such as it manifests itself to-day, will disappear in a few short years; the graceful form, those charming contours, the noble head that raises itself so proudly above her shoulders: all will be food for loathsome worms; but—though the material must of necessity be transformed—its idea, the creative thought—abstract beauty, in a word—what shall destroy this? Does it not exist in the Divine Mind? Once perceived and known by me, must it not continue to live in my soul, triumphing over age and even over death?

I was meditating thus, striving to tranquillise my spirit and to dissipate the doubts which you have succeeded in infusing into my mind, when Pepita and I encountered each other. I was pleased and at the same time troubled to find myself alone with her—hoping and yet fearing that the others would join us.

The silvery voice of Pepita broke the silence, and drew me from my meditations, saying—

“How silent you are, Don Luis, and how sad! I am pained to think that it is perhaps through my fault, or partly so at least, that your father has caused you to spend a disagreeable day in these solitudes, taking you away from a solitude more congenial, where there would be nothing to distract your attention from your prayers and pious books.”

I know not what answer I made to this. It must have been something nonsensical, for my mind was troubled. I did not wish to flatter Pepita by paying her profane compliments, nor, on the other hand, did I wish to answer her rudely.

She continued—

“You must forgive me if I am wrong, but I fancy that, in addition to the annoyance of seeing yourself deprived to-day of your favourite occupation, there is something else that powerfully contributes to your ill-humour.”

“And what is this something else?” I said, “since you have discovered it, or fancy you have done so.”

“This something else,” responded Pepita, “is a feeling not altogether becoming in one who is going to be a priest so soon, but very natural in a young man of twenty-two.”

On hearing this I felt the blood mount to my face, and my face burn. I imagined a thousand absurdities; I thought myself beset by evil spirits; I fancied myself tempted by Pepita, who was doubtless about to let me understand that she knew I loved her. Then my timidity gave place to haughtiness, and I looked her steadily in the face. There must have been something laughable in my look, but either Pepita did not observe it, or, if she did, she concealed the fact with amiable discretion; for she exclaimed, in the most natural manner—

“Do not be offended because I find you are not without fault. This that I have observed seems to me a slight one. You are hurt by the jests of Currito, and by being compelled to play—speaking profanely—a not very dignified _rôle_, mounted, like the reverend vicar with his eighty years, on a placid mule, and not, as a youth of your age and condition should be, on a spirited horse. The fault is the reverend dea, to whom it did not occur that you should learn to ride. To know how to manage a horse is not opposed to the career you intend to follow, and I think, now that you are here, that your father might in a few days give you the necessary instruction to enable you to do so. If you should go to Persia or to China, where there are no railroads yet, you will make but a sorry figure in those countries as a bad horseman. It is possible even that, by this oversight, the missionary himself may come to lose prestige in the eyes of those barbarians, which will make it all the more difficult for him to reap the fruits of his labours.”

This and other arguments Pepita adduced in order to persuade me to learn to ride on horseback; and I was so convinced of the necessity of a missionary’s being a good horseman, that I promised her to learn at once, taking my father as a teacher.

“On the very next expedition we make,” I said, “I shall ride the most spirited horse my father has, instead of the mule I am riding to-day.”

“I shall be very glad of it,” responded Pepita, with a smile of indescribable sweetness.

At this moment we were joined by the rest of the party, at which I was secretly rejoiced, though for no other reason than the fear of not being able to sustain the conversation, and of saying a great many foolish things, on account of the little experience I have had in conversing with women.

After our walk my father’s servants spread before us on the fresh grass, in the most charming spot beside the brook, a rural and abundant collation.

The conversation was very animated, and Pepita sustained her part in it with much discretion and intelligence. My cousin Currito returned to his jests about my manner of riding and the meekness of my mule. He called me a theologian, and said that, seated on mule-back, I looked as if I were dispensing blessings. This time, however, being now firmly resolved to learn to ride, I answered his jests with sarcastic indifference. I was silent, nevertheless, with respect to the promise I had just made Pepita. The latter, doubtless thinking as I did—although we had come to no understanding in the matter—that silence for the present was necessary to insure the complete success of the surprise that I would create afterward by my knowledge of horsemanship, said nothing of our conversation. Thus it happened, naturally and in the simplest manner, that a secret existed between us; and it produced in my mind a singular effect.

Nothing else worth telling occurred during the day.

In the afternoon we returned to the village in the same manner in which we had left it. Yet, seated on my easygoing mule and at the side of my aunt Casilda, I did not experience the same fatigue or sadness as before.

During the whole journey I listened without weariness to my aunt’s stories, amusing myself at times in conjuring up idle fancies. Nothing of what passes in my soul shall be concealed from you. I confess, then, that the figure of Pepita was, as it were, the centre, or rather the nucleus and focus, of these idle fancies.

The noonday vision in which she had appeared to me, in the shadiest and most sequestered part of the grove, brought to my memory all the visions, holy and unholy, of wondrous beings, of a condition superior to ours, that I had read of in sacred authors and in the profane classics. Pepita appeared to the eyes and on the stage of my fancy in the leafy seclusion of the grove, not as she rode before us on horseback, but in an ideal and ethereal fashion—as Venus to Æneas, as Minerva to Callimachus, as the sylph who afterward became the mother of Libusa to the Bohemian Kroco, as Diana to the son of Aristæus, as the angels in the valley of Mamre to the Patriarch, as the hippocentaur to St. Anthony in the solitude of the wilderness.

That the vision of Pepita should assume in my mind something of a supernatural character, seems to me no more to be wondered at than any of these. For an instant, seeing the consistency of the illusion, I thought myself tempted by evil spirits; but I reflected that in the few moments during which I had been alone with Pepita near the brook of the Solana, nothing had occurred that was not natural or commonplace; that it was afterward, as I rode along quietly on my mule, that some demon, hovering invisible around me, had suggested these extravagant fancies.

That night I told my father of my desire to learn to ride. I did not wish to conceal from him that it was Pepita who had suggested this desire. My father was greatly rejoiced; he embraced me, he kissed me, he said that now not you only would be my teacher, but that he also would have the pleasure of teaching me something. He ended by assuring me that in two or three weeks he would make me the best horseman of all Andalusia; able to go to Gibraltar for contraband goods, and come back laden with tobacco and cotton, after eluding the vigilance of the Custom-house officers; fit, in a word, to astonish the riders who show off their horsemanship in the fairs of Seville and Mairena, and worthy to press the flanks of Babieca,[18] Bucephalus, or even of the horses of the sun themselves, if they should by chance descend to earth, and I could catch them by the bridle.

I don’t know what you will think of this notion of my learning to ride, but I take it for granted you will see nothing wrong in it.

If you could but see how happy my father is, and how he delights in teaching me! Since the day after the excursion I told you of, I take two lessons daily. There are days on which the lesson is continuous, for we spend from morning till night on horseback. During the first week the lessons took place in the courtyard of the house, which is unpaved, and which served as a riding-school.

We now ride out into the country, but manage so that no one shall see us. My father does not want me to show myself on horseback in public until I am able to astonish every one by my fine appearance in the saddle, as he says. If the vanity natural to a father does not deceive him, this, it seems, will be very soon, for I have a wonderful aptitude for riding.

“It is easy to see that you are my son!” my father exclaims with joy, as he watches my progress.

My father is so good that I hope you will pardon him the profane language and irreverent jests in which he indulges at times. I grieve for this at the bottom of my soul, but I endure it with patience. These constant and long-continued lessons have reduced me to a pitiable condition with blisters. My father enjoins me to write to you that they are caused by mortification of the flesh.

As he declares that within a few weeks I shall be an accomplished horseman, and he does not desire to be superannuated as a master, he proposes to teach me other accomplishments of a somewhat irregular character, and sufficiently unsuited to a future priest. At times he proposes to train me in throwing the bull, in order that he may take me afterwards to Seville, where, with lance in hand, on the plains of Tablada, I shall make the braggarts and the bullies stare. Then he recalls his own youthful days, when he belonged to the body-guard, and declares that he will look up his foils, gloves, and masks, and teach me to fence. And, finally, as my father flatters himself that he can wield the Sevillian knife better than any one else, he has offered to teach me even this accomplishment also.

You can already imagine the answer I make to all this nonsense. My father replies that, in the good old times, not only the priests, but even the bishops themselves, rode about the country on horseback, putting infidels to the sword. I rejoin that this might happen in the Dark Ages, but then in our days the ministers of the Most High should know how to wield no other weapons than those of persuasion. “And what if persuasion be not enough?” rejoins my father. “Do you think it would be amiss to re-enforce argument with a few good blows of a cudgel?” The complete missionary, according to my father’s opinion, should know how on occasion to have recourse to these heroic measures, and as my father has read a great many tales and romances he cites various examples in support of his opinion. He cites, in the first place, St. James, who on his white horse, without ceasing to be an apostle, put more Moors to the sword than he preached to or convinced; he cites a certain Señor de la Vera, who, being sent on an embassy to Boabdil by Ferdinand and Isabella, became entangled in a theological discussion with the Moors in the courtyard of the Lions, and, being at the end of his arguments, drew his sword and fell upon them with fury in order to complete their conversion; and he finally cites the Biscayan hidalgo, Don Inigo de Loyola, who, in a controversy he had with a Moor regarding the purity of the Holy Virgin, growing weary at last of the impious and horrible blasphemies with which the aforesaid Moor contradicted him, fell upon him, sword in hand, and, if he had not taken to his heels, would have enforced conviction upon his soul in a terrible fashion. In regard to the incident relating to St. Ignatius, I answer my father that this was before the saint became a priest; and in regard to the other examples, I answer that historians are not agreed.

In short, I defend myself as best I can against my father’s jests, and I content myself with being a good horseman, without learning other accomplishments unsuited to the clergy, although my father assures me that not a few of the Spanish clergy understand and practise them with frequency in Spain, even in our own day, with a view to contributing to the triumph of the faith, and to the preservation or the restoration of the unity of the Church.

I am grieved to the soul by this levity of my father’s, and that he should speak with irreverence and jestingly about the most serious things; but a respectful son is not called upon to go further than I do in repressing his somewhat Voltairean freedom of speech. I say _Voltairean_, because I am not able to describe it by any other word. At heart my father is a good Catholic, and this thought consoles me.

Yesterday was the Feast of the Cross, and the village presented a very animated appearance. In each street were six or seven May-crosses covered with flowers, but none of them was so beautiful as that placed by Pepita at the door of her house. It was adorned by a perfect cascade of flowers.

In the evening we went to an entertainment at the house of Pepita. The cross which had stood at the door was now placed in a large saloon on the ground-floor, in which there is a piano, and Pepita presented us with a simple and poetic spectacle—one that I had seen when a child, but had since forgotten.

From the upper part of the cross hung down seven bands or broad ribbons, two white, two green, and three red, the symbolic colours of the theological virtues. Eight children, of five or six years old, representing the seven sacraments, and holding the seven ribbons that hung from the cross, performed with great skill a species of contra-dance. The sacrament of baptism was represented by a child wearing the white robe of a catechumen; ordination, by another child as a priest; confirmation, by a little bishop; extreme unction, by a pilgrim with staff and scrip, the latter filled with shells; marriage, by a bride and bridegroom; and penance, by a Nazarene with cross and crown of thorns.

The dance was a series of reverences, steps, evolutions, and genuflexions, rather than a dance, performed to the sound of very tolerable music, something like a march, which the organist played, not without skill, on the piano.

The little dancers, children of the servants or retainers of Pepita, after playing their parts, went away to bed loaded with gifts and caresses.

The entertainment, in the course of which we were served with refreshments, continued till twelve; the refreshments were syrup served in little cups, and afterwards chocolate with sponge-cake, and meringues and water.

Since the return of spring Pepita’s seclusion and retirement are being gradually abandoned, at which my father is greatly rejoiced. In future Pepita will receive every night, and my father desires that I shall be one of the guests.

Pepita has left off mourning, and now appears, more lovely and attractive than ever, in the lighter fabrics appropriate to the season, which is almost summer. She still dresses, however, with extreme simplicity.

I cherish the hope that my father will not now detain me here beyond the end of this month at farthest. In June we shall both join you in the city, and you shall then see how, far from Pepita, to whom I am indifferent, and who will remember me neither kindly nor unkindly, I shall have the pleasure of embracing you, and attaining at last to the happiness of being ordained.

“_Pepita Jiménez._” _Juan Valera._

_IF SHE COULD ONLY WRITE._

“Please write me a letter, Holy Sir.” —“To Robin, I suppose?” “You know because one evening dark To startle us you chose,— But on my soul ...”—“No more, a pen And paper, daughter, give: ‘_Belovèd Rob_,’”—“‘Belo’d’?”—“Then You don’t love him, I perceive.” “Oh yes! and now you’ve put it, It must stay”—“‘_If you but knew How very sad and lonely, dear, I am away from you!_’” “Why, Sir, you know my very thoughts!”... “To an old man like me A maid’s breast is of crystal clear Through which the heart we see. ‘_Without you all is bitterness, But with you Paradise._’” “Pray make those letters quite clear, Sir, And underline them thrice.” “‘_And if you no longer love me, Suffer so much shall I. That_’ ...”—“‘Suffer’? ’tis not the word, Sir; Put ‘I shall surely die.’” “’Twere sinning against Heaven, my child.” “‘Die,’ sir, in black and white!” “Not so.”—“Alas, your heart’s of ice, Oh! if I could but write!... Dear Father, Holy Father! In vain you write for me, If incarnate in the letters Is not all that I may be. For Christ’s sake, tell him that my soul Within me will not stay, That if anguish does not kill me ’Tis because I weep all day. That my lips, the roses of his breath, Know only how to close; And that all smiles and laughter Long ago within me froze. That the eyes he thought so lovely Are heavy with distress, Since there’s nobody to look at them They shut for wretchedness. That for the echo of his voice My ears are all athirst; That of all the torments suffer’d His absence is the worst ... And that it is _his_ fault my heart’s In such sweet-bitter plight!... Good heavens, how many things I’d put If I could only write!...”

_Campoamor._

_DOCTOR PERTINAX._

St. Peter was polishing the large knocker of the Gate of Heaven, leaving it as bright as the sun—which is not to be wondered at since the knocker St. Peter was cleaning _is_ the sun we see appearing every morning in the east.

The holy porter, merrier than his colleagues at Madrid, was humming some little air not unlike _Ça ira_ of the French.

“Hola! You get up very early,” said he, bending his head and staring at a person who had stopped before the threshold of the gate.

The unknown did not reply, but bit his lips, which were thin, pale, and dry.

“No doubt,” continued St. Peter, “you are the savant who was dying last night?... What a night you made me pass, friend!... I never closed my eyes once, thinking you might be likely to knock; my last orders were not to let you wait a moment, a piece of respect paid to your sort here in heaven. Well, welcome, and come in; I can’t leave the gate. Go through, and then straight on.... There is no entresol.”

The stranger did not stir from the threshold, but fixed his little blue eyes on the venerable bald head of St. Peter, who had turned his back to go on rubbing up the sun.

The newcomer was thin, short, and sallow, with somewhat feminine movements, neat in his attire, and without a hair on his face. He wore his shroud elegantly and nicely adjusted, and he measured his gestures with academic severity.

After gazing for some time at St. Peter working, he wheeled round and was about to return on the journey he had come he knew not how; but he found he was standing above a gloomy abyss, in which the darkness almost seemed palpable, and a horrisonous tempest was roaring with flashes of livid light at intervals like lightning. There was not a trace of any stairs, and the machine by which he dimly remembered he had mounted was not in sight either.

“Sir,” exclaimed he, in a vibrating and acrid voice: “May I know what this means? Where am I? Why was I brought here.”

“Ah, you haven’t gone yet; I am very glad, for I had forgotten something.” And pulling his memorandum-book out of his pocket, the saint moistened the point of the pencil between his lips and asked—

“Your name?”

“I am Doctor Pertinax, author of the book stereotyped in its twentieth edition, called ‘_Philosophia Ultima_.’...”

St. Peter was not a quick writer, and of all this had only put down Pertinax....

“Well, Pertinax of what?”

“Of what? Oh, I see, you mean from where? just as they say: Thales of Miletus, Parmenides of Elea....”

“Exactly, Quixote of la Mancha....”

“Write down, Pertinax of Torrelodones. And now, may I know what this farce means?”

“This farce?”

“Yes, sir. I am the victim of a farce, this is a comedy: my enemies, my colleagues, with the help of subtle artifices and theatrical machinery, exalting my mind with some beverage, have doubtless prepared all this. But the deception is useless. My power of reasoning is above all these appearances, and protests with a mighty voice against this low trickery; neither masks nor limelights are of any avail, for I am not taken in by such palpable effrontery, and I say what I always said, and which is enframed on page 315 of my ”_Philosophia Ultima_,“ note _b._ of the sub-note Alpha, _i.e._, that after death the deception of appearances will not exist, and there will no longer be any desire for life, _nolite vivere_, which is only a chain of shadows linked with desires, &c., &c.... Therefore, one of the two: either I have died, or I have not died; if I have died, it cannot possibly be I as I was when alive half an hour ago, and all that I see around me, as it can only be a representation, is not, for I am not; but if I have not died, and am myself, what I was and am, it is clear that although what I see around me exists in me by representation, it is not what my enemies wish me to believe, but an unworthy farce designed to frighten me; but ’tis in vain, for....”

And the philosopher swore like a coal-heaver. And the swearing was not the worst, for he lifted up his voice towards Heaven, the inhabitants of which were beginning to awake at the noise, while some of the blest were already descending by the staircase of clouds, tinged some as with woad, others with a sea-blue.

Meanwhile St. Peter held his sides with both hands to keep from bursting into the laughter with which he was nearly choking. Pertinax became more irritated at the saint’s laughter, and the latter had to stop to try and pacify him by the following words—

“My dear sir, farces are of no avail here, nor is it a question of deceiving you, but of bringing you to Heaven, which it appears you have merited for some good works of which I am ignorant; in any case, calm yourself and go up, for the inhabitants above are already astir, and you will find somebody who will conduct you to where all will be explained to your taste, so that not a shadow of doubt will remain, for doubts all disappear in this region, where the dullest thing is the sun which I am polishing.”

“I do not say _you_ are deceiving me, for you seem an honest man; the tricksters are others, and you only an instrument, unconscious of what you are doing.”

“I am St. Peter....”

“They have persuaded you that you are; but there’s no proof that you are.”

“Dear sir, I have been porter here for more than eighteen hundred years....”

“Apprehension, preconception....”

“Preconception fiddlesticks!” cried the saint, now somewhat angry; “I am St. Peter, and you a savant, and like all that come to us, an ignorant fool, with more than one bee in your bonnet....”

The gateway was now crowded with angels and cherubim, saints, male and female, and a number of the blest, who all formed a circle round the stranger and smilingly surveyed him.

* * * * *

From amongst them there stepped forth St. Job:—“I think,” said he, “that this gentleman would be convinced that he had lived in error if he could see the Universe as it actually is. Why not appoint a commission from amongst us to accompany Doctor Pertinax and show him the construction of the immense piece of architecture, as Lope de Vega says, whom I am sorry not to see among us.”

Great was the respect for St. Job, and they immediately proceeded to a nominal vote, which took up a good deal of time, as more than half the martyrology had repaired to the gate. The following were by the results appointed members of the commission:—St. Job, by acclamation; Diogenes, by a majority; and St. Thomas the Apostle, by a majority. St. Thomas of Aquinas and Duns Scotus had votes.

Dr. Pertinax gave way to the supplications of the commission, and consented to survey all the machinery and magic, with which they might deceive his eyes, said he, but not his mind.

“My dear fellow, don’t be downhearted,” said St. Thomas, as he sewed some wings on to the Doctor’s shoulder-blades: “Look at me, I was an unbeliever, and....”

“Sir,” replied Pertinax, “you lived in very different times, the world was then in its theological age, as Comte said, and I have passed through all those ages and have lived side by side with the ”_Criticisms of Pure Reason_“ and the ”_Philosophia Ultima_“; so that I believe in nothing, not even in the mother who bore me; I only believe in this, inasmuch as I know that I am, I am conscious, but without falling into the preconception of confounding representation with essence, which is unattainable, that is to say, excepting the being conscious, putting aside all that is not myself (and all being in myself) I _know_, by knowing that everything is represented (and I as everything else) by simply appearing to be what it is, and the reality of which is only investigated by another volitive and effective representation, a harmful representation, being irrational and the original sin of the Fall; therefore, this apparent desire undone, nothing remains to explore, since not even the will for knowledge remains.”

Only St. Job heard the last word of this discourse, and, scratching his bald crown with his potsherd, he replied—

“The truth is, you savants are the very devil for talking nonsense, and do be offended, but those things, whether in your head or imagination, as you please, will give you warm work to see them in reality as they are.”

“Forward! forward!” shouted Diogenes at this moment; “the sophists denied me motion, and you know how I proved it; forward!”

And they began their flight through boundless space. Boundless? Pertinax thought it so, and said—

“Do you expect to show me all the Universe?”

“Certainly,” replied St. Thomas.

“But since the Universe—seemingly, of course—is infinite ... how can you conceive the limit of space?”

“Conceive it, with difficulty; but see it, easily. Aristoteles sees it every day, for he takes the most terrible walks with his disciples, and certainly he complained that the space for walking ended before the disputes of his peripatetics.”

“But how can space have an end? If there is a limit, it will have to be nothing; but as nothing does not exist, it cannot form a boundary; for a boundary is something, and something apart from what is bounded.”

St. Job, who was already growing impatient, cut him short—

“Enough, enough of conversation! but you had better bend your head so as not to knock it, for we have arrived at that limit of space which cannot be conceived, and if you take a step more, you will break your head against that nothing you are denying.”

And effectually; Pertinax saw there was nothing more beyond; wished to feel it, and bumped his head.

“But this can’t be!” he exclaimed, while St. Thomas applied to the bump one of those pieces of money which pagans take with them on their journey to the other world.

There was no help for it, they had to turn back, the Universe had come to an end. But ended or not, how beautiful shone the firmament with its millions and millions of stars!

“What is that dazzling light shining above there, higher than all the constellations? Is it some nebula unknown to the astronomers of the earth?”

“A pretty nebula!” replied St. Thomas; “that is the celestial Jerusalem, from which we have just descended, and what is shining so are the diamond walls round the city of God.”

“So that those marvels related by Chateaubriand, and which I thought unworthy of a serious man...?”

“Are perfectly true, my friend. And now let us go and rest on that star passing below there, for i’ faith, I am tired of so much going backwards and forwards.”

“Gentlemen, I am not presentable,” said Pertinax; “I have not yet doffed my shroud, and the inhabitants of this star will laugh at such indecorous garb....”

The three Ciceroni of Heaven all burst out laughing together. Diogenes was the first to exclaim—

“Though I should lend you my lantern, you would not meet a living soul in that star, nor in any other star.”

“Of course,” added Job, very seriously, “there are no inhabitants except on the Earth; don’t talk such nonsense.”

“This I cannot believe!”

“Well, let us go and show him,” said St. Thomas, who was already growing angry. And they journeyed from star to star, and in a few minutes had traversed all the Milky Way and the most distant starry systems. Nothing, not a sign of life. They did not even encounter a flea, for all the numerous globes they surveyed. Pertinax was horrified.

“This is the Creation!” he exclaimed; “what solitude! Come, show me the Earth; I want to see that privileged region; by what I conjecture, all modern cosmography is a lie, the Earth is still, and the centre of all the celestial vault; and round her revolve the suns and planets, and she is the largest of all the spheres....”

“Not at all,” replied St. Thomas; “astronomy is not mistaken; the earth revolves round the sun, and you will soon see how insignificant she appears. Let us see if we can find her amongst all that crowd of stars. _You_ look for her, St. Job; _you_ have plenty of patience.”

“I will!” exclaimed the Saint of the potsherd, as he hooked his spectacles round his ears.

“It is like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay!... I see her! there she goes! look! look how small! she looks like a microbe!”

Pertinax looked at the Earth and sighed.

“And are there no inhabitants except on that mote?”

“Nowhere else.”

“And the rest of the Universe is empty?”

“Empty.”

“Then of what use are such millions and millions of stars?”

“As lamps. They are the public illumination of the Earth. And they are also useful for singing praises to the Almighty. And they serve as eke-outs in poetry, and you can’t deny they are very pretty.”

“But all empty?”

“Every one!”

Pertinax remained in the air for a good time sad and thoughtful. He felt ill. The edifice of his “_Philosophia Ultima_” was threatening ruin. Upon seeing that the Universe was so different from what reason demanded, he began to believe in the Universe. That brusque lesson of reality was the rude and cold contact with material which his spirit needed in order to believe. “It is all so badly arranged, but perhaps it is true!” thus thought the philosopher. Suddenly he turned to his companions, and asked them—“Does Hell exist?”

The three sighed, made gestures of compassion, and replied—

“Yes; it exists.”

“And condemnation is eternal?”

“Eternal.”

“A solemn injustice!”

“A terrible reality!” replied the three in chorus.

Pertinax wiped his brow with his shroud. He was perspiring philosophy. He began to believe that he was in the other world. The injustice of everything convinced him. “Then the cosmogony and the theogony of my infancy was the truth?”

“Yes; the first and only philosophy.”

“Then I am not dreaming?”

“No.”

“Confession! confession!” groaned the philosopher; and he swooned into the arms of Diogenes.

* * * * *

When he awoke, he found himself in his bed. His old servant and the priest were by his side.

“Here is the confessor, sir, for whom you asked....”

Pertinax sat up, stretched out both hands, and looking at the confessor with frightened eyes, cried—

“I say and repeat, that all is pure representation, and that I am the victim of an unworthy farce.”——And he expired really.

“_Solos de Clarin._” _Leopoldo Alas._

_A FEW THOUGHTS ON LIGHT._

Man has invented artificial light, he inferred it from natural light; he has in the same way invented artificial truths, inferring them from supreme truths.

The sun appears every day illuminating space to show us the heavens.

In Madrid the gas is lighted every night that we may see the earth.

Man is to God what a box of matches is to the sun.

Human pride can also write its Genesis.

It can begin like this—

“One day man said—‘Fiat lux,’ and there were matches.“

Henceforward a blaze of light which illumines us perfectly.

The light invented by men is worth more than the light created by God: let us see how.

A thousand sunbeams cost nothing; one box of matches costs a halfpenny.

”_Hojas Sueltas._” _José Selgas._

_EPIGRAMS._

TO A CRITIC.

Thy foolish criticism On the plays composed by me Wounds not my egotism; But a sore, indeed, ’t would be, Should they be praised by thee.

_Leandro Fernandez de Moratin_, 1760-1828.

TO A TRANSLATOR OF THE ÆNEID.

In bad Spanish great Vergil You dare to asperse. And tell us most closely You follow his verse: If to imitate Maro Is your real intent, Pray will it’s to burn By _your_ last testament.

* * * * *

The mother of young Cupid, Once her baby sleepless lay, Fearful lest the child should perish, Weeping loud in her dismay, Quickly to the gods repair’d. Grave Morpheus took it in his care, Laid it in the bed of Hymen,— In a trice it slumber’d there.

* * * * *

Love, Morpheus, and I Shared a maiden fair; Love took her heart As his due share, And Morpheus liked Her sweet eyes best So I for myself Claimed all the rest.

* * * * *

The Devil tried hard Job’s faith to impair, Loss of property, children, And health he’d to bear, But failing to tempt him To curse his own life, To make him despair He left him his wife.

* * * * *

A MATHEMATICIAN, García by name. Was thus sadly address’d By the wife of the same: How is’t you acquir’d Such a great reputation And are so behindhand In Multiplication?

_Pablo de Jérica._

* * * * *

THE SUN-DIAL.

A sun-dial was made by some natives near Quito, Who thought it so fine (in Spanish “bonito”), They put up a roof to protect it from rain, Saying, “We never shall have such a sun-dial again.” But of use it was none, since the roof hid the sun. And I said in my heart, ’tis a nice counterpart Of good laws for our weal Spoil’d by fools’ silly zeal!

_J. E. Hartzenbusch_, 1806-1880.

_FOLK-TALES._

THE GIRL WHO WANTED THREE HUSBANDS.

A certain Pacha had a daughter who had three suitors. When her father asked her which of the three she would marry, she replied she wanted all three. To this he replied it was impossible, no woman ever had three husbands; but the girl, who was wilful and spoilt, persisted, and at last the good Pacha in despair called the three suitors before him and told them he would give his daughter to whichever returned with the most wonderful thing within a year’s time. The three suitors set out in quest, and after vainly wandering about the world for many months, one of them met a witch who showed him a looking-glass in which you saw whatever you wished to see. This he bought from her. The second suitor also met this witch, who sold him a strip of carpet, which, when you sat upon it, carried you to wherever you wished to go; while the third suitor bought from her a salve, the which, when applied to the lips of a newly laid out corpse returned the body to life. Now the three suitors met, and showed each other their respective finds.

“Let us wish to see our fair mistress,” said one; and they wished and looked into the mirror, when, lo and behold! they saw her dead, laid out in her coffin ready for burial. They were overwhelmed with grief.

“My salve will restore her to life,” said the third suitor, “but by the time we get to her she will have been long buried and devoured by worms.”

“But my carpet will take us to her at once,” cried the second suitor, and so they all sat down on it and wished.

In a trice they found themselves in the Pacha’s palace, and the salve was applied to the dead girl’s lips. She immediately came to life again, sat up, and looking at the Pacha said—

“I was right, you see, father, when I wanted all three.”

_(Abridged from) Fernan Caballero._

PÉR SOLUTION OF THE DIFFICULTY.

There was in the village of Abadiano a certain farmer called Chomin, who had made a prodigious fortune by his devotion to a number of saints of both sexes.

When first married he possessed nothing beyond his wife and a dog; but it occurred to him to make perpetual family saints of St. Isidro, patron of farmers; St. Antonio, advocate of animals; St. Roque, enemy of the plague; Santa Lucia, protector of the sight; St. Barbara, enemy of thunderbolts and lightning, and other innumerable saints, to each of whom he offered up every night their respective Pater Noster and Ave Maria, and certes, he struck a mine of wealth by so doing, for from that moment he began to prosper, and in such a way that after a few years he had the best house and farm in the district of Gaztelua.

In Chomin’s house even a headache was unknown; the wheat, which in Biscay generally produces sixteen bushels for one sown, produced twenty-four for Chomin; the maize, which nearly always produces thirty for one, produced forty for Chomin; not a single head of his cattle had come to grief, although he had many, and when a storm burst upon the heights of Gorbea and Amboto, and the lightning flashed towards Abadiano, it always took good care to make a little round so as to avoid passing over Chomin’s buildings and property.

Chomin had a servant by name Péru, to whom he had promised his daughter, Mari-Pepa, with whom Péru was in love, and verily not without motive, for she was the prettiest girl that came to dance on Sundays in the market-place of Abadiano.

Péru was a hard worker, and as honest as the day; but he had a very short memory, and was not over-intelligent; it was related of him among other things, how one day that Péru had to go to San Antonio de Urquiola, his master having commissioned him to kiss the Saint for him, Péru, instead of giving the kiss to the Saint, gave it to the Saint’s pig, which always accompanies him. But in spite of this, if he was in love with Mari-Pepa, she was still more in love with him, for we know what women are like; they may dislike a man for being poor, ugly, or wicked, but they don’t mind how stupid he is.

One night, the eve of St. James, after the whole family, under the direction of Chomin, had told their rosary, with an extra rosary of Pater Nosters and Ave Marias to the patron saints of the house, Chomin said to Péru—

“Listen, Péru. To-morrow begins the fair of Basurto, and I am thinking of going there to see if I can buy a pair of bullocks to rear and train, so that when you and Mari-Pepa marry you may have a good yoke of oxen, for it is already time to think of settling you.”

Péru and Mari-Pepa, upon hearing this, blushed as red as cherries, and looked at each other with eyes dancing with joy.

Chomin continued, “I shall be away for at least a couple of days, for until I come across a pair which will be the pride of the country I wo come back. Meanwhile, Péru, you will have to take my place at prayers, and be careful not to forget the Pater Noster and Ave Maria for each of the Saints who protect us.”

“Don’t you worry about it,” replied Péru, “not a single one shall be forgotten.”

“I hope not, Péru, for, you see, we owe them a great deal. My wife and I had only one rag in front and another behind when we made them our Saints, and to-day.... Well, you shall see a good few ounces of gold from the sweepings of our stables on your and Mari-Pepa’s wedding-day! But suppose you omit, for example, St. Barbara and her corresponding Pater Noster and Ave Maria, and a tempest bursts over us.... Lord Jesus, at the very thought my legs tremble! Now let us see, Péru, if you know by heart all the saints to whom you must pray.”

Péru recited the names of all the patrons of the family to Chomin’s satisfaction, but the latter burdened his fealty in the accomplishment of his task, by threatening that he should not become his son-in-law if he did a single saint out of their respective Pater Noster and Ave Maria, which omission would be sure to be found out by the ill-luck which would certainly happen to the family, house, property, or cattle.

The next morning, after he had attended early mass, Chomin took his way to the fair, now certain that Péru would not pass over a single saint. Poor Péru took the charge so much to heart, and above all the threat, that he passed the whole night and next morning in trying to find a sure way of not forgetting a single saint, but with no avail, however much he racked his brains. And it was a serious case, for Péru said to himself, “I know all their names off like a parrot, but as there are twenty-five besides the Virgin, how can I help it if I give an Ave Maria or so short, and there is an end to my marriage with Mari-Pepa? It would be a pretty to-do if that happened, for I shall not find another companion like her easily, and then Chomin won’t let us leave the house without some household furniture, a good yoke of oxen, and fifty ducats for the dowry.”

At the fall of evening all the village was dancing to the sound of the tambourine in the market-place of Abadiano, all except Péru and Mari-Pepa. Péru was sitting amidst brambles and furze on a desolate slope overlooking the village. Mari-Pepa was in the market-place close to the village fountain, refusing to dance with anybody, and full of grief at Péru’s state of mind.

Suddenly Péru uttered a shout of joy and flew down the hill, seized Mari-Pepa, and began the maddest dance ever seen in Abadiano. He had thought out an infallible way how not to forget a single saint in the celestial city.

That evening, after praying to each of the particular saints appointed by Chomin special patron saints of the family, lest any should have been forgotten he prayed to _all the saints in the celestial city,—and seven leagues without_, in case any should be taking a walk.

_A. Trueba._

_MIRACLES OF ST. ISIDRO, PATRON-SAINT OF MADRID._

OLD CHRISTOVAL’S ADVICE, AND THE REASON WHY HE GAVE IT.

If thy debtor be poor, old Christoval cried, Exact not too hardly thy due; For he who preserves a poor man from want, May preserve him from wickedness too.

If thy neighbour should sin, old Christoval cried, Never, never unmerciful be! For remember it is by the mercy of God That thou art not as wicked as he.

At sixty-and-seven the hope of heaven Is my comfort, old Christoval cried; But if God had cut me off in my youth, I might not have gone there when I died.

You shall have the farm, young Christoval, My good master Henrique said; But a surety provide, in whom I can confide, That duly the rent shall be paid.

I was poor, and I had not a friend upon earth, And I knew not what to say; We stood by the porch of St. Andrew’s Church, And it was St. Isidro’s day.

Take St. Isidro for my pledge, I ventured to make reply; The Saint in Heaven may perhaps be my friend, But friendless on earth am I.

We entered the church and came to his grave, And I fell on my bended knee; I am friendless, holy Isidro, And I venture to call upon thee.

I call upon thee my surety to be, Thou knowest my honest intent; And if ever I break my plighted word, Let thy vengeance make me repent

I was idle, the day of payment came on, And I had not the money in store; I feared the wrath of Isidro, But I feared Henrique more.

On a dark, dark night I took my flight And hastily fled away: It chanced that by St. Andre Church The road I had chosen lay.

As I passed the door I thought what I had swore Upon St. Isidr day; And I seemed to fear because he was near, And faster I hastened away.

So all night long I hurried on, Pacing full many a mile; I knew not his avenging hand Was on me all the while.

Weary I was, and safe I thought, But when it was daylight, I had, I found, been running round And round the church all night.

I shook like a palsy and fell on my knees, And for pardon devoutly I prayed: When my Master came up—What, Christoval, You are here betimes, he said.

I have been idle, good master! I cried, Good master, and I have been wrong! And I have been running round the church In penance all night long.

If thou hast been idle, Henrique said, Go home and thy fault amend; I will not oppress thee, Christoval, May the Saint thy labour befriend.

Homeward I went a penitent, And I never was idle more; St. Isidro blest my industry, As he punished my fault before.

When my debtor was poor, old Christoval said, I have never exacted my due; I remembered Henrique was good to me, And copied his goodness too.

When my neighbour has sinned, old Christoval said, I have ever forgiven his sin. For I thought of the night by St. Andrew’s Church, And remembered what I might have been.

_Southey’s “Letters from Spain and Portugal.”_

THE WEDDING NIGHT.

Before Isidro’s holy shrine Hernando knelt and pray’d, “Now, blessed Saint, afford thine aid, And make Aldonza mine; And fifty pieces I will lay, The offering of my Wedding Day, Upon thy holy shrine.”

Hernando rose and went his way; Isidro heard his vow; And, when he sued, Aldonza now No longer said him nay; For he was young and _débonair_, And sped so well that soon the fair Had fix’d the Wedding Day.

The Wedding Day at length is here. The day that came so slow; Together to the church they go, The youth and maid so dear; And kneeling at the altar now Pronounced the mutual marriage vow, With lips and heart sincere.

And joy is on Hernando’s brow, And joy is in his breast; To him by happiness possest, The past exists not now; And gazing on the wedded maid, The youth forgot Isidro’s aid, And thought not of his vow.

The sun descended from the height Of heaven his western way; Amid Hernando’s hall so gay, The tapers pour their light; The Wedding Guests, a festive throng, With music and with dance and song, Await the approach of night.

The hours pass by, the night comes on, And from the hall so gay, One by one they drop away, The Wedding Guests; anon The festive hall is emptied quite; But whither on his Wedding Night Is young Hernando gone?

Hernando he had gone away The Wedding Guests before; For he was summon’d to his door By an old man cloth’d in grey. Who bade the Bridegroom follow him; His voice was felt in every limb, And forced them to obey.

The old man he went fast before, And not a word said he, Hernando followed silently, Against his will full sore; For he was dumb, nor power of limb Possess’d, except to follow him, Who still went mute before.

Towards a church they hasten now, And now the door they reach; The Bridegroom had no power of speech, Cold drops were on his brow; The church where St. Isidro lay, Hernando knew, and in dismay, He thought upon his vow.

The old man touch’d the door, the door Flew open at his will, And young Hernando followed still The silent man before; The clasping doors behind him swung, And thro’ the aisles and arches rung The echo of their roar.

Dim tapers, struggling with the gloom, Sepulchral twilight gave: And now to St. Isidro’s grave The old man in grey is come. The youth that sacred shrine survey’d, And shook to see no corpse was laid Within that open tomb.

“Learn thou to pay thy debts aright!” Severe the old man said, As in the tomb himself he laid; “Nor more of vows make light.” The yearning marble clos’d its womb, And left Hernando by the tomb, To pass his Wedding Night.

_Southey’s “Letters from Spain and Portugal.”_

_FATHER COBOS’ HINT._

(LAS INDIRECTAS DE PADRE COBOS.)

A certain Father Superior of, I don’t know where, used to take such delicious cups of chocolate as only holy friars do. An intimate friend of the friar, who was extremely fond of chocolate, began visiting him very frequently, and always at the hour in which his reverence drank his chocolate, the friar being so courteous as to always order another cup for his visitor. But as this friend abused the father’s hospitality by coming day after day, the latter complained of this sponging tendency, whereupon a lay-friar, whose name was Father Cobos, declared that it fell to him to give him a hint to drop this habit. To this the Father Superior agreed. Noticing soon after that his friend no longer came to the convent, and desirous to know the lay-friar’s hint, he asked him after a fortnight what he had said to make his friend leave off coming even to see him.

“I gave him a hint,” replied Father Cobos. “I said, ‘Look you, Don Fulano, don’t be so disobliging as to take your chocolate at home; for the Father Superior says you are such a tremendous glutton that it warms the cockles of his heart every time he sees you.’”

The Father Superior was so amused at this that he divulged the story, and since then the hints of Padre Cobos have become proverbial throughout Spain.

_Juan Martinez Villergas._

_POPULAR SONGS._

THE PARSLEY VENDOR.

This morning as the golden sun Was rising, pretty maid, I saw you in the garden Bending o’er the parsley bed. To see you somewhat nearer Through the garden gate I strayed, And found when I went out again I’d lost my heart, sweet maid. You must have come across it, For I lost it there, I say. “Oh, pretty parsley maiden, Give back my heart, I pray.”

_A. Trueba_, 1819-1889.

PETENERA.

When He made thee those black lashes God, no doubt, would give thee warning That for all the deaths thou causest, Thou must put thyself in mourning.

(_Trans. A. Strettel._)

* * * * *

Alcaldè măyòr, Alcaldè măyòr, You sentence poor prisoners for theft, While your daughter walks out with her black eyes, And robs all our hearts right and left.

LA GRANADINA.

Some tears, my pretty maiden, If only two or three, And the goldsmiths of Granàda Shall set them as jewels for me.

* * * * *

They tell me that you love me, But ’tis a falsehood bold; So circumscribed a bosom Could never two hearts hold.

* * * * *

As I carelessly opened Your letter, my dear, Your heart dropp’d out, Into my bosom, I fear, So I took it in; but As there’s no room for two, I have taken out mine, Which I now send to you.

BOLERO.

I saw two stones Fight in your street For the joy of being trodden Under your feet; And I ponder’d then. If the stones do this, Oh, what will men?

BOLERO.

A favour, Blacksmith, I ask of you; Pray make me a lover Of steel so true. And this is what he replies to me It can’t be very true If a man it’s to be.

* * * * *

As we know, God made man first, And afterwards the womenstock; First of all the tower is built. But last of all the weather-cock.

* * * * *

May the Lord God preserve us from evil birds three, From all friars, and curates, and sparrows that be; For the sparrows eat up all the corn that we sow, The friars drink down all the wine that we grow, Whilst the curates have all the fair dames at their nod: From these three evil curses preserve us, good God.

(_Trans. G. Borrow._)

_PROVERBS._

The Man is Fire, the Woman tow, the Devil comes the flame to blow.

Choose your Wife on a Saturday, not on a Sunday.

While the tall Maid is stooping the little one hath swept the House.

He who hath a handsome Wife, or a Castle on the Frontier, or a Vineyard near the Highway, never lacks a quarrel.

He who marries a Widow, will have a dead Man’s Head often thrown in his Dish.

There’s not a pin’s point between the yes and no of a woman.

Mother, what kind of thing is this Marrying? Daughter, ’tis to spin, to bear Children, and to cry your eyes out.

The honest woman and the broken leg within doors.

Women and hens soon lost with gadding about.

He who stirs honey must have some stick to him.

In the house of the tambourinist, all dance.

No olla without bacon, no wedding without a tambourine.

A partridge frightened is half cooked.

There’s many a good drinker under a ragged cloak.

God doth the Cure, and the Doctor takes the Money.

When the Devil hies to his Prayers he means to cheat you.

Change of Weather finds Discourse for Fools.

When all Men say you are an Ass, ’tis time to bray.

A Handful of Mother-wit is worth a bushel of Learning.

A Pound of Care will not pay an ounce of Debt.

A broken head never lacked a rag.

As good bread is baked here as in France.

When loaves are lacking, cake will do.

He who sings, scares away sorrow.

The hen lives on even with the pip.

However early you get up, the day won’t break any sooner.

Short cuts, deep ruts.

Patience, and shuffle the cards.

The hare jumps out when you least expect her.

Where you hope to find rashers there are not even spits.

Opportunity is painted bald.

When the heifer’s given you, run quick with the halter.

He who is not Handsome at Twenty, nor Strong at Thirty, nor Rich at Forty, nor Wise at Fifty, will never be Handsome, Strong, Rich, nor Wise.

I wept when I was born, and every day shows why.

Buy at a Fair, and sell at home.

Let us be Friends, and put out the Devil’s eye.

Women, Wind, and Fortune are ever changing.

When going up hill For a mule I sigh, But I like my own legs When I downwards hie.

He who will have a Mule without any Fault must keep none.

You should not blame the pannier for the donkey’s fault.

The mule said to the donkey. Gee up, long ears.

There’s a difference between Peter and Peter.

God keep me from him whom I trust, from him whom I trust not I shall keep myself.

The foot of the Owner is the best manure for his Land.

If your dove-cote never lacks corn, you will never lack pigeons.

Lock your Door, that you may keep your Neighbour honest.

Never mention the rope in the house of a hanged man.

Finger nails come in when wedges are useless.

When the abbot sings out, the acolyte’s not far behind.

At night all cats are grey.

One devil’s like another.

He who sheared me still handles his scissors.

Once bitten by a scorpion, and frightened at its shadow.

Flies don’t enter a closed mouth.

Some have the glory, and others card the wool.

Don’t stretch your leg further than the street is long.

What you have to give to the mouse give to the cat.

Smugglers make better custom-house officers than do carbineers.

Money paid, arms soon tired.

Italy to be born in, France to live in, and Spain to die in.

_ANECDOTES._

An astute Gallegan one day presented himself with the most candid air at the shop of a tailor, telling him he had come to draw the fifty reals he had deposited with him two years ago.

The tailor was thunderstruck, and replied that he had no money of his, whereupon the Gallegan began to cry out and complain loudly and bitterly, which soon drew a crowd round the shop door.

The tailor was sure of his fact, since there was no document to attest the imaginary deposit, but fearing the scandal might damage his business, yet unable to confess to the debt after denying it, had recourse to a neighbouring tradesman, who promised to settle the affair.

“Look you here, yokel, why are you making such a fuss about a mistake? Don’t you remember that it was to my shop you brought the fifty reals?”

“Oh, yes,” slyly replied the Gallegan; “but that was another fifty.”

* * * * *

While ascending a steep hill the mayoral opens the door, of the diligence every now and then, to shut it with a loud bang, without a word to the passengers.

“Oh, mayoral!” cries one, “why do you open and shut the door like that, we are freezing.”

“Hush! it’s for the mules; every time the door slams they think somebody has got out, and pull better.”

A countryman wrote the following letter to his son, a student in the capital:—

“MY DEAR SON,—This is to tell you that I am very displeased with the bad conduct which I have been told you observe in Madrid. If a good thrashing could be sent by post, you would have had several from me. As for your mother, the good woman spoils you as usual. Enclosed you will find an order for seventy reals, which she sends you without my knowledge,

“Your father, JOHN.”

* * * * *

Horse-dealer, exhibiting a superb animal to probable customer:—

“Take this one, sir. He’s a splendid trotter. Mount him at four in the morning at Madrid, and you’ll be at Alcalá at five.”

“He won’t suit me.”

“Why not?”

“What should I do at five o’clock in the morning at Alcalá where I know nobody?”

* * * * *

“The deuce! I do feel bad.”

“What’s the matter.”

“I ate a steak of horse-flesh and it’s going round and round in my inside.”

“My dear fellow! It must have been a circus-horse!”

* * * * *

A young girl was taken to see a bull-fight for the first time, and one of the matadors was furiously attacked by a bull.

“Don’t be afraid, dear, don’t be afraid!” exclaimed her father, while the matador was flying through the air with the impetus of the beast’s horns.

“Oh, no, papa, it’s the bull-fighter who’ll be afraid.”

* * * * *

AT A STATION.

“A peseta for a cup of chocolate! It’s very dear. It would be better to lower the price, though it should be of an inferior quality.”

“To please you, señor, I will make it three reals, but I can’t make it of inferior quality.”

* * * * *

IN SCHOOL.

“Now, Pepito, is _huevo_ [egg] masculine or feminine?”

(Pepito, thoughtfully) “It’s very difficult to tell.”

“Difficult? What do you mean?”

“Well, sir, how can one know until the chicken’s hatched?”

* * * * *

An Aragonese carman was unmercifully beating a mule who had fallen down in one of the chief streets of the capital. The passers-by stopped to censure the carman’s conduct, exclaiming—

“How cruel!”

“Poor mule!”

“What a beast the man is!”

The carman stopped his blows and going to the mule’s head, said—

“Caramba! Jocky; what a lot of friends you’ve made in Madrid!”

* * * * *

In the porch of a church a beggar’s stool, on the stool a hat, in the hat a cardboard with the inscription—

“Ladies and gentlemen, do not forget a poor blind man, who has gone to his breakfast.”

* * * * *

A dying courtier said to the priest that the only favour he asked of God was to let him live till he had paid his debts.

“That is a good motive, my son, and it is to be hoped that your prayer will be heard.”

“Alas, father! If it were, I should be sure never to die.”

* * * * *

An Arab of Tetuan asked a Jew, which of the three religions was the best: the Jewish, the Christian, or the Mahometan?

The Jew replied—“If Messiah really came, the Christian is the best; if He did not, mine is the best; but whether or no, yours, Mahomet, is always bad.”

_ECCENTRICITIES OF ENGLISHMEN._

It is not to be wondered at that a country so fecund in heroes and men of genius as the home of Nelson, Newton, and Byron, should also produce some very eccentric men. Of no other sons of Adam are such whimsicalities and oddities related as of those born in England. At every step on the other side of the Channel one meets with mad philosophers, who, if they unexpectedly inherit a large fortune, instead of leading a sybaritic life, order a schooner or brig to be built, embark straight away without troubling about their destination, let the wind take them whither it lists, swallow half-a-dozen bottles of rum, double themselves into a berth, and mingle their snores with the roaring of the waves until their craft strands on a shoal, when the dampness of the ocean reminds them it’s time to wake up.

I knew an Englishman poorer than a retired Spanish ensign, and more miserly than an old clo’man, who, with the help of a clever Newfoundland, which he loved like a brother, saved the life of a lord’s daughter who had fallen into the Thames. Ten years later, when he did not even remember his generous deed, he received from the father of the lord’s daughter a gift of £200,000 sterling. This stroke of good luck produced no impression on his mind, to judge by any outward expression of joy; and the following day when his creditors came to congratulate him, they found him, to their surprise, bathed in his own blood. Not far from the corpse lay a letter with the following contents: “Let nobody be accused of my death, ascribe it still less to bad fortune. I was happy in the act of suicide; I had good health and money. And yet I felt inclined to kill myself first, because I felt inclined, secondly, because from a boy I had always wished for a capital of £100,000, and I find myself with one hundred thousand more than I wanted. I leave half my fortune to my Newfoundland dog, to be invested in cat’s-meat, of which he is very fond, and the other half to whoever undertakes to buy the cat’s-meat for the dog. Witness my signature....”

Needless to say, that all who knew the last will and testament of the deceased, wanted to discharge it, with no further philanthropy than receiving the recompense. As for the dog, which was present at the reading of his master’s will, that so greatly concerned him, he did not show the slightest sign of joy. However, the will was declared invalid, and to avoid all disputes the £200,000 were returned to the chest of the noble lord.

The latter, finding himself again possessor of funds of which he had taken leave for ever, desired to use them to satisfy a caprice, which should give him the fame, throughout the whole country, of a wit. He laid a wager with a rich tradesman that he would not sell a hundred thousand sovereigns at a halfpenny each, though he should take his stand for six hours in one of the most crowded spots of the capital. This proposition deceived the tradesman as it would have deceived anybody, and he agreed to take the bet, the stakes being nothing less than £200,000, convinced that it was impossible he could lose. There was a Court _levée_ that day, and a tremendous crowd of people were crossing the Thames over Westminster Bridge towards St. James’s Palace. The tradesman and the lord took up their post one side of the bridge, behind a huge open chest, full of sovereigns. “A ha’penny each, sovereigns a ha’penny each!” cried the tradesman, and the lord at his side did nothing but laugh; the stipulations being that the lord should only be allowed to laugh, and the tradesman to say “A ha’penny each, sovereigns a ha’penny each!” The people passed on, saying: “What a take in! Good heavens! Sovereigns for a ha’penny. What will they be like?” The tradesman began to despair. More than one passer-by took up one of the coins, turned it round and round, and then noticing the laughter which the lord pretended he could not stifle, put the money back, saying, “They are well imitated, but nobody can do me.”

“A ha’penny each, sovereigns a ha’penny each!” shouted the tradesman unceasingly, and the more he exerted himself to cry his ware, the more clearly did the public think they saw through the trick by which he hoped to empty their pockets. They stayed thus from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon, the lord laughing and the tradesman shouting. The result was that the latter lost the bet. Only two sovereigns were sold, and these were bought by a medical student, believing them to be false, but hoping to pass them in a gambling den or other low place. When he found they were accepted, he returned post-haste to Westminster Bridge to lay in a new provision, but arrived too late; the lord and the tradesman had already vanished.

_A. Ribot y Fontserré._

_NEWSPAPER HUMOUR._

IN THE STREET.

Excuse me, I can’t stop. The sermon begins at five, and Padre Macario preaches to-day. His words are worth their weight in gold, I don’t want to lose _one_. I thought of going to call on the Zaragatonas to give them a piece of my mind; deceitful things, they wrote an anonymous letter to the head of my husband’s department, saying he had the influenza, and that all the office would catch it, which is a vile story; he is quite well, and if he had anything the matter with him I should say so at once.... They may be thankful this is Holy Week or I should teach them a thing or two, but I don’t want to offend Heaven to-day. The wicked scandalmongers! ... They shall hear from me sooner or later. ... But ... I can’t stop. What’s the time? Five o’clock. I must run the whole way. Oh! do you think you could manage to send me some stalls for La Tubau![19]

IN THE CHURCH.

“Hail, Mary,” ... Madam, you are crushing my mantilla. ... “full of grace,” ... yes, _you_, Madam! “Blessed are thou amongst.” ... Good evening, doña Agustina. ... No, the sermon has not commenced yet, but it must very soon for I saw Padre Macario go into the sacristy.... Yes, isn’t there a crowd, and quite natural too, there are not many orators _like_ him.... “Our Father which” ... You look rather pale? What’s the matter? ... Oh, don’t speak to me of husbands, there are some wretches amongst them? ... What, he wouldn’t let you come to the sermon? Heavens, what a man! Mine, thank God, is not like that; on the contrary, so that I might feel quite easy, he has promised to give baby his food. He’s a very good husband; fancy, this morning I had to go out to see the dynamiters in court, and he stayed at home to wash out some baby-clothes.... “Thy kingdom come,” ... but he has his enemies. Those horrid Zaragatonas; ... they can’t bear me because I’m plump. ... They’re jealous and I’ve told them so. It’s the will of Heaven, for as for eating, I eat very little, and some days a little stewed veal, an omelette, and half-a-dozen oranges satisfy me as much as if I had eaten an ox. But it’s no good, they dislike me, because they themselves are so scraggy, and now they’ve started a nasty rumour about my husband. Suppose he has a little cold in the head, what’s that to do with them? “Pray for our sins now and” ... _They_ are consumptive, if you like: you need only look at them, especially the eldest, who dresses her salad with cod-liver oil. I, of course, respect the sacredness of this week, or I should go and see them, when they would have to look to themselves. Besides, I don’t like talking ill of anybody, but they had a lieutenant-colonel lodging with them, who only slept there, for he ate with his mess, and paid them ten reals for a tiny bedroom, and was always making them presents besides; if he had an old pair of trousers, for instance, he would give them to their mother to make a little jacket for herself. Now that all means something. In fact, I don’t like scandal, but that lieutenant-colonel, “the Lord is with thee.”... What? Padre Macario in the pulpit? So he is, and just going to begin.

“Dear Brethren....”

What eloquence!

“May you in truth be brethren, with your conscience free from the sin of hatred....”

He’s right. People are so uncharitable, those Zaragatonas, for instance.

“Love one another with the love of brethren. Christ pardoned His tormentors....”

(_Much moved_) Ah! ah! It seems impossible that people won’t repent. When I think of those Zaragatonas, I don’t know what’s the matter with me! No, when Holy Week is over, I shall go and hear what they have to say for themselves. Horrid creatures!

“_De todo un poco._” _Luis Taboada_ (_Madrid Comico_).

* * * * *

A coiner of false money was confessing that he had made and uttered dollars (20 reals) which were only worth four reals.

“You must restore the difference,” said the priest.

“But to whom can I restore it, father?” asked the compunctious penitent.

The priest hesitated for a moment, then said—

“Make as many other dollars worth thirty-six reals.”

“_La Ilustracion Española y Americana._”

SPANISH CEREMONY.

A very ceremonious Spaniard, when asked why he was not present at the funeral of a certain personage, replied—

“Because he owed me a call.”

CHILDREN.

A governess out walking with two children:— “Look, that’s the white cow that gives us our milk.” “Does that black one give us the coffee then?”

* * * * *

“Oh, children! what are you doing up that tree?” “Mama, Pepito wanted to pick some pears.” “And you?” “I got up to persuade him not to.”

RURAL SYMPATHY.

“My boy,” said a happy mother, “has won the first prize at school.”

“I can understand your feelings. Oh, how well I remember how pleased I was when our pig took a prize at the show.”

“_Blanco y Negro._”

IN THE STALLS.

“Do you notice how fat all the chorus are?”

“Yes, the manager is very economical, and the fat ones get the same pay as the thin but fill the stage better.”

“_Blanco y Negro_”

* * * * *

“Take care they don’t give you mule’s flesh,” said a mistress to her maid, who was going out marketing.

“And how can I tell, ma’am?”

“I don’t know, but mind you don’t buy any.”

“Good, ma’am; I won’t take any meat until the butcher has shown me the cow’s horns.”

“_La Ilustracion Española y Americana._”

* * * * *

Furious wife to inflexible husband:—

“My health requires it. The doctor has ordered me a change of air.”

“Very well, my dear, use another fan.”

“_La Ilustracion Española y Americana._”

THE ANARCHIST AGITATION.

Military police to poor wretch found in a miserable garret suspiciously hiding a paper:—

“Some little preparation for the First of May, eh?”

(_Timidly_) “Only a sonnet dedicated to the victims.”

“_Madrid Comico._”

SUNDAY REST.

The Congress is at present warmly debating the question as to Sunday rest. As scarcely any of us Spaniards work even on week-days, _why_ should we work on a Sunday?

“_Madrid Comico._”

* * * * *

Woman and Man, I’ve a specialist’s word, Are as different quite As a fish and a bird. She, like the latter, Is graceful and sweet, White feathers, charms many, Long wings, and short feet. He, on the contrary, Sticky as gum. Has, patent or hidden, Sharp fins, a fair sum. They marry each other, For love possibly, And the law of their cage Turns and takes out the key. Poor things, unaware Were they, but now larn, That the well-being of one Is the other one’s harm. If she longs for air, For water he cries; The bird drowns in water, In air the fish dies.

But some pairs are happy, to me you reply! Yes, some few amphibious creatures, I sigh.

“_Los Lunes de el Imparcial._” _Manuel del Palacio._

_HUMOROUS ADVERTISEMENTS._

_Madrid Comico._

_AT THE THEATRE._

_Madrid Comico._

NOTES CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL.

[_The accent, used in Spanish both for accentuation and pronunciation, has mostly only been given in the names of persons and places in which it is necessary for the pronunciation, as José, otherwise Jose._]

ALARCON, PEDRO ANTONIO DE, perhaps the most popular Spanish writer of the nineteenth century, was born in Guadix in 1833, and was a member of a noble family of but little means. After studying first jurisprudence, and afterwards theology, he devoted himself to letters, for which he had always shown a strong proclivity. Amongst the best known of his numerous works are “The Three-Cornered Hat,” which is based on an old Spanish tale, somewhat Boccaccian in flavour; “The Scandal”; “La Alpujarra,” the records of a delightful trip in Andalusia; and several collections of short tales, of which many have been translated into English—notably by Mary J. Serrano (New York).

ALAS, LEOPOLDO, author and critic of the present day.

ALEMAN, MATEO, native of Seville, flourished in the year 1609. He followed in the steps of Mendoza, by the more ample portraiture of the life of a rogue than is the former’s Lazarillo, in his “Guzman de Alfarache,” which appeared in 1553, forty-six years after its prototype. Little is known of Aleman’s life; he seems to have been long employed in the Treasury, and at last to have retired, and devoted the rest of his life to letters. But he claims to be remembered by his work, “Guzmann de Alfarache,” the popularity of which was so immediate that, like “Don Quixote,” it provoked a spurious “Second Part” before the real continuation appeared, and was soon translated into the chief European tongues, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, and even Latin, and into excellent English by Mabbe, whose contemporary, Ben Jonson, thus speaks of it:

“The Spanish Proteus, which, though writ But in one tongue, was formed with the world’s wit, And hath the noblest mark of a good booke, That an ill man doth not securely looke Upon it; but will loathe or let it passe, As a deformed face doth a true glasse.”

(Verses prefixed to Mabbe’s translation, and signed by Ben Jonson.)

AYGUALS DE IZCO, WENCESLAO, nineteenth century. This author, now often held up as a model to avoid, enjoyed, some fifty years ago, no little popularity as a humorous writer.

“BOOK OF JOKES, THE,” is to be found in the collection of “Spanish Salt,” edited by A. Paz y Melía, and published in 1890. Señor Paz believes most of the tales in the “Book of Jokes” should be ascribed to Hurtado de Mendoza.

CALDERON DE LA BARCA, PEDRO, the great successor and rival of Lope de Vega, was eminently a poet in the national temper, and had a brilliant success. He was born at Madrid on January 17, 1600. After serving as a soldier he was, on the death of Lope, formally attached to the Court, and was subsequently made a Knight of the Order of Santiago. In 1651 he followed the example of Lope de Vega and other men of letters by entering the Church. He died in 1681, on the Feast of Pentecost, when all Spain was ringing with his autos, and was buried in the splendid church of Atocha. Calderon was remarkable for his personal beauty, and was endowed with a benevolent and kindly character. Of his autos, or religious plays, the “Wonder-working Magician” is the most characteristic of the old Spanish stage (the question has been raised if Goethe had not read it before he wrote “Faust,” the plot being very similar). Of the secular dramas, “The Mayor of Zalamea” is in Spain the most popular, and is still frequently represented, while “Life is a Dream” is perhaps pre-eminent for its brilliant flowing verse and philosophic thoughts. “The Mayor of Zalamea,” though boisterous and jolly in the act given in the text, winds up a tragedy of the first water.

CAMPOAMOR, RAMON DE, native of Asturias, September 24, 1817, called by Blanco García the Poet “Philosopher” (a title disputed by other critics), is one of the few modern Spanish poets whose fame has crossed the frontier of the Peninsula, his works having been studied in Italy and France. Like his late fellow-poet, Zorrilla, he has reached a ripe old age, and his peculiar style (of which “If She could only Write” is perhaps scarcely typical) has had several imitators.

“CELESTINA; OR, THE TRAGICOMEDY OF CALISTO AND MELIBŒA,” is considered one of the chief foundations of the Spanish drama. The first act was probably written by Rodrigo Cota of Toledo, and it may be assumed that it was produced about 1480. The rest was added by Fernando de Rojas de Montalvan. Unhappily, large portions of this vigorous work abound in a shameless libertinism. It was followed by many imitations, and was soon translated into English, German, Dutch, Latin, Italian, and French.

CERVANTES DE SAAVEDRA (MIGUEL) was a member of an old noble family, decayed in fortune, and was born in the month of October in 1547 in Alcalá de Henares. Here he probably received his early education, which it has been conjectured he continued at Madrid, and later on at the University of Salamanca. He discovered a strong predilection for literature, but his necessities seemed to have forced him to seek for a livelihood by some other means. Anyway, in 1570 we find him serving at Rome as chamberlain in the household of Cardinal Aquaviva; and he subsequently entered the navy, and lost his left hand at the famous sea-fight of Lepanto, which fight decisively arrested the intrusion of the Turks into the West of Europe (October 7, 1571). His misfortune did not prevent him joining the troops of the King of Spain at Naples; but when returning to Spain by sea, he was made a prisoner by pirates, who took him to Algiers, where for five years he was kept as a slave. After this period he was ransomed, when he went to Madrid. He married in 1584, and soon after began his first literary efforts, which were for the stage. But after composing some thirty plays with little pecuniary result, his genius was diverted into a different channel, and he produced, in 1605, the First Part of the immortal novel of “Don Quixote.” Inimitable in its wit and humour as this work is, it was at first received with comparative indifference. Ultimately, however, it met with the greatest applause, although the author reaped few or none of the emoluments which might have been expected from it. The Second Part was not published till 1615, and was even superior to the first. (Avellaneda’s spurious Second Part appeared in 1614.) Needless to say, “Don Quixote” soon became known all over the civilised world, and was translated into a multitude of tongues. The oldest English translation is by Shenton, 1612, which is followed by a vulgar, unfaithful, and coarse one by Milton’s nephew, John Philips, 1712; one by Motteux; one by Jervas (Jarvis), 1742, which Smollet used freely in his own, 1755; a few others of lesser importance; and finally, in the eighties of the present century, one by Mr. Ormsby; and Mr. H. E. Watt’s learned and faithful work, from which the extracts have been drawn for this volume. The other principal works of Cervantes are “The Journey to Parnassus,” his Exemplary Novels, “Galatea,” and the unfinished romance, “The Labours of Persiles and Sigismunda,” his last work. Cervantes died on the 23rd of April, in the year 1616 (the year of Shakespeare’s death), at the age of sixty-eight.

CHRONICLE OF THE CID. Southey’s so-called “Chronicle of the Cid” is not a translation of any single work, but is based upon, i. La Cronica del Cid; ii. La cronica general (thirteenth century); iii. El Poema del Cid (twelfth century); and lastly, the ballads of the Cid. The extract given is, however, a word for word translation from the Cronica del Cid. The first and only edition of this chronicle was printed in 1552, but it is impossible to ascertain its age. (The Abbot who published it absurdly supposed it to have been written during the Cid’s lifetime.) The incident in the given extract seems to have much amused a mediæval audience, and it was often enlarged and improved upon by the minstrels and story-tellers.

CID, THE (ARABIC, SAID = LORD), DON RODRIGO DIAZ DE BIVAR, also styled _The Campeador_, the national hero of Spain, was born at Burgos about 1040. The facts of his career have been wrapped by his admiring countrymen in such a haze of glorifying myths, that it is scarcely possible to detect them. His life, however, appears to have been entirely spent in fierce warfare with the Moors, then masters of a great part of Spain. His exploits are set forth in the works given in the note to the Chronicle of the Cid; and the story of his love for Ximena is the subject of Corneille’s masterpiece, “Le Cid” (based on a play by the Spanish dramatist Guillen de Castro). The Campeador’s last achievement was the capture from the Moors of Valencia, where he died in 1099.

EPIGRAMS. The names of two famous satirists, of Forner (d. 1797) and Pitillas, are, for various reasons, lacking in this compilation.

ESTÉBANEZ DE CALDERÓN, SERAFIN (El Solitario), born in Malaga, 1799, and died in Madrid in 1867, is given the priority of those authors, akin to the Periodical Essayists in English literature, called in Spain writers of “_costumbres_” (manners and customs of the people), who occupy so important a place in the Spanish literature of the nineteenth century, and amongst whom de Larra (Figaro) is pre-eminent. Unfortunately El Solitario employs such subtle style and archaic phrases that the Spaniards themselves complain they have to read his works with a dictionary.

“ESTEBANILLO GONZALEZ, THE LIFE OF,” which appeared in 1646, is the autobiography of a buffoon, who was long in the service of Ottavio Piccolomini, the great general of the Thirty Years’ War, but it is an autobiography so full of fiction, that Le Sage, sixty years after its appearance, easily changed it into a mere romance (Ticknor).

“FERNAN CABALLERO” (Cecilia Böhl de Faber, daughter of the Spanish scholar), was born in 1796, and married three times. She is sometimes known under her last name, Cecilia Arron (or Arrom) de Azala. Her numerous works, chiefly novelas, were published under the pseudonym of Fernan Caballero, the name of a little village in La Mancha. They give truthful and lively pictures of Spanish (especially Andalusian) life and manners, are eminently national in tone and spirit, and have an excellent moral tendency, which combination soon made her one of the most popular Spanish writers of the nineteenth century. She also shares with Trueba the honour of collecting Spanish Folk-tales and popular songs from the mouths of the people, before the days of Folk-lore societies. Queen Isabella II. made her an offer of a residence in the Alcazar of Seville, of which she availed herself till the revolution of 1868, after which she lived in a modest villa, and devoted herself to charity. She died April 7, 1877.

FOLK-TALES. To a student of Spanish Folk-lore this selection will be unsatisfactory. The tales from Fernan Caballero and Trueba (see _Biographical Notes_) are, however, amusing, while Southey’s verses present a sample of the numerous tales current in Spain about the saints, and which are more often than not allied to the ridiculous. _El Padre Cobos_ is the title of a famous periodical produced in the years 1854-6 (see _Newspaper Humour_).

“GATOMAQUIA.” [Having been unable to find a passage in Lope de Veg burlesque epic, the “Gatomachia,” comprehensive enough in itself to form a good extract, I append some lines descriptive of the hero and heroine, which, though somewhat vulgarised in the English, may give a notion of its humour.]

On a lofty peak’d ridge of a til’d-roof there sat Zapaquilda, the prettiest pussy cat, Enjoying a blow and most busy at work Cleaning waistcoat and tail with tongue graceful yet perk, For as jaunty a cat and important is she As if she belonged to a monastery— No mirror had she, though a mocking magpie Had carried a broken potsherd up on high— Who never found student’s shirt-collar but he Behind a tile hid it as his property. When she’d finished her washing, and wetting her paws, Had drawn two long stripes down her sides with her claws, She sang a sweet sonnet with such style and grace, It reminded one of the musician of Thrace, And made all the hearts of her list’ners rejoice And say, “I am sure that’s a pussy cat’s voice,” While some feline solfas and harmonious chromatics Laid a whole nest of rats low with nervous rheumatics.

’Twas late spring and fair Flora with buskins of gold Decked the earth with her roses and flowers manifold, When to Sir Marramaquiz, of fame far and wide, His squire (of La Mancha, by birth) quickly hied, To tell how in the sun Zapaquilda, as fair As the roseate dawn, had been combing her hair, And now, with a charm and a grace quite her own, Was singing a trifle of famed Mendelssohn, That enamoured the air. Marramaquiz’s heart At this news of his squire of dire love felt the smart; He called for his charger, a monkey acquired In the war of the Apes and the Cats, and attired In breeches and boots, worth many a bright dollar, And a little girl’s cuff round his neck for a collar, In cape, cap and feather, and girt with a sword, (The feather he’d pluck’d from a parrot whose word Of defiance had vexed him), used both whip and spur, And found Zapaquilda still taking the air,— Who on seeing him, modest as nun ‘neath a veil, Lick’d one paw, droop’d her eyelids and let down her tail, For of virtuous maidens, ’tis ever the duty To be more circumspect the greater their beauty.

GUEVARA, LUIS VELEZ DE, born in 1572 or 1574 at Ecija in Andalusia. He wrote a good deal for the stage (four hundred plays), in which he was an early follower of Lope de Vega; but the work which established his fame was the “Diablo Cojuelo,” the “Limping Devil,” which suggested the idea of Le Sag famous “Diable Boiteux.” Guevara died in the year 1644.

HARTZENBUSCH, JUAN EUGENIO, lived from 1805 to 1880, was born of a German father and Spanish mother. He is one of the first scholars, prose writers, and critics of the century, and like his contemporary, Mesonero Romanos, edited valuable collections of the flower of the old Spanish drama. His masterpiece is the tragedy, “The Lovers of Teruel,” which treats upon an old Spanish legend, and is one of the most popular of modern plays. An opera with the same title and subject, by a Spanish composer of the day, is also deservedly popular. “Mariquita la Pelona,” which is taken from a collection of short tales by this author, is written in old Spanish, and has a sequel in a modern “Mariquita,” who repairs to a convent for a year to obtain possession of a sum of money offered her by some unknown person, on condition she undergoes this temporary confinement, to find at the expiration of the twelve months that the mysterious donor is a slighted suitor, who had vowed to humiliate her.

IGLESIAS, born in Salamanca, wrote a number of poems, the lighter of which have alone retained popularity, the serious and duller ones, written after he became a priest, being justly neglected. He died in 1791.

ISLA, FATHER, was born in 1703, and died in 1781 at Bologna, where, being a Jesuit, he had been sent on the general expulsion of his order from Spain. He was an author possessed of a brilliant and delicate satire, most thoroughly exemplified in his celebrated work, “The History of the Famous Preacher, Friar Gerund,” a direct attack on the bad style of preaching then in vogue. Padre Isla is also prominent as the translator into Spanish of “Gil Blas,” which, without any foundation, he maintained had been stolen by Le Sage from Spanish literature.

JÉRICA (XÉRICA), PABLO DE (he was a young man during the French revolution), is very severely criticised by Blanco García in his “History of the Literature of the Nineteenth Century.”

LARRA, MARIANO JOSÉ DE (Figaro), was born in Madrid in the year 1809. Receiving his first education in France, where his father served as doctor in Napoleon’s army, he returned to complete it at Madrid, and afterwards repaired to the University of Valladolid, where he began to study law. He wrote his first prose essays at the age of twenty, but it was his later articles, signed “El pobrecito Hablador,” which first gave him the undisputed reputation of critic and writer of “_costumbres_,” among the host of which, his Spanish contemporaries and imitators, he reigns supreme, while what preserve his fame are the brilliant and satirical articles signed “Figaro,” amongst which “The Old Castilian,” and “Yo quiero ser comico,” are the best known. Unfortunately his private life was disturbed by wild love affairs, and he committed suicide on account of an attachment to a married lady, in 1837, at the age of twenty-eight.

“LIBRO DE LOS EXEMPLOS” (author unknown). This collection of tales is considered by Don Pascual de Gayangos to be posterior to Don Juan Manuel. The greater part of the tales are taken from Rabbi Mosch Sefardi’s “Disciplina Clericalis” (early part of the twelfth century), probably the Latin translation of an Arabic original, which is drawn from Oriental sources, and is itself the common well from which drew, amongst others, the authors of the “Gesta Romanorum,” the “Decameron,” and the “Canterbury Tales.” The story entitled “The Biter Bit” figures, for instance, in the “Disciplina Clericalis” and the Gesta Romanorum. “El Libro de los Gatos” belongs to the same century as the “Libro de los Exemplos” (or Enxemplos).

LOPE FELIX DE VEGA CARPIO was born on November 25, 1562, at Madrid. This extraordinary Spanish genius, second only to Cervantes, than whom he was more popular during the lifetime of both, rose to a degree of fame reached by few of any country. Epics, serious and humorous (see “_Gatomaquia_”); novelas; ballads; epigrams; plays—religious, heroic, of intrigue, or of domestic life; nothing, in fact, came amiss to his pen. But it is as dramatist that he is best known, and in which quality his facility was such that at his death it was reckoned he had composed eighteen hundred plays and four hundred autos (religious dramas), while it is stated that one of his plays was written and acted within five days. Lope de Vega’s last days were the prey to a melancholy fanaticism. He regretted he had ever been engaged in any occupations but such as were exclusively religious; and on one occasion he went through with a private discipline so cruel that the walls of the compartment where it occurred were found sprinkled with his blood. From this he never recovered, and he died on August 27, 1635, nearly seventy-three years old. His funeral, which immense crowds thronged to see, lasted nine days; and of the eulogies and poems written on the occasion, those in Spanish were sufficient to form one volume, those in Italian another.

MANUEL, PRINCE DON JUAN, born May 5, 1282, at Escalona, died 1349, was of the blood royal of Castile and Leon, nephew to Alfonso the Wise, cousin to Sancho IV. He first fought against the Moors when he was twelve, and the rest of his years were spent in filling great offices in the State, or in military operations on the Moorish frontier. In spite of a life full of intrigue and violence he devoted himself successfully to literature, and is the first great Spanish prose writer. In “Count Lucanor,” his best and more known work, most of the tales are of Oriental origin. That Shakespeare knew the tale, here given the title of his play, is indubitable; while “The Naked King” will appear familiar to readers of Hans Andersen’s fairy tales (“The Emperor’s New Clothes” in its turn has given the plot for Ludwig Fulda’s drama, “The Talisman,” considered the best German play of the last three years, and recently introduced into England by Mr. Beerbohm Tree under the title of “Once Upon a Time”).

MENDOZA, DIEGO HURTADO DE, a distinguished Spanish statesman, soldier, and historian, was born at Granada in 1503. After studying at the Universities of Granada and Salamanca, he entered the service of the Emperor Charles V., and was employed in Italy both as diplomatist and general with equal success. He at last fell under the displeasure of Philip II. of Spain, and in 1567 was banished. He died at Madrid in the year 1575. His greatest work is “La guerra de Granada contra los Moriscos”; he also wrote some fine poetry; and claims the merit of producing in “Lazarillo de Tormes” the first model of the _novela picoresca_, peculiar to the literature of Spain. “Lazarillo” was translated into English as early as 1586 by David Rowland, of which rendering as many as twenty editions are known, and which was re-edited in the seventeenth century by James Blakeston, with but slight alterations. Like other books enjoying a wide reputation, it produced many imitations, among them a “Second Part” of little merit. See _Book of Jokes_.

MESONERO ROMANOS, RAMON DE (El Curioso Parlante), born in Madrid, 1803, died in 1882, who appeared in the literary world, almost simultaneously, with de Larra, and together with him and Estébanez de Calderón belongs to the writers of “_costumbres_,” seems to an English reader inferior to these two in style and conception, though Spaniards consider his “Escenas Matritenses” one of the great works of the nineteenth century, and they are held by Blanco García to be invaluable photographs of life in the writer’s days. Mesonero Romanos was also a composer of light and piquant verses, and distinguished himself in the critical world by his collections of Spanish dramatists, published by Rivadeneyra.

MORATIN, LEANDRO FERNANDEZ, died 1828, the more famous son of a famous father (Nic. Fern. Moratin).

NEWSPAPER HUMOUR. The strictly humorous Spanish periodical literature of to-day is of no great merit, and often borders upon impropriety. Of the papers from which cuttings are here given, _La Ilustracion Española y Americana_ (the Spanish _Illustrated News_), is first-rate in its class—Fernandez Bremen is a well-known contributor. The daily paper—_El Imparcial_—devotes a sheet every Monday to lighter and more amusing literature under the direction of Señor Ortega Munilla. Manuel Palacio is the comic poet of the day. Taboada, who writes for _El Madrid Comico_, the nearest approach to our _Punch_, is nothing if not vulgar. _Blanco y Negro_ is a fairly successful attempt of humour with propriety. The famous periodical, _El Padre Cobos_, is not represented here as (it appeared in the years 1854-56) it cannot be considered to belong to the present day. It is, moreover, purely political.

OSSORIO Y BERNARD, MANUEL (nineteenth century). A humbler member of the _Spectator_ school, or “autores de costumbres.”

PALACIO VALDÉS, ARMANDO (nineteenth century). One of the Spanish novelists of the day, and of great popularity, especially in America, where nearly all his novels have been translated into English. “Sister Saint Sulpice” is perhaps his masterpiece. Of his later novels, “Froth” should be avoided as a disagreeable work, and no true picture of aristocratic Spanish circles. “El Maestrante,” the last work of this author, is to be brought out shortly by Mr. Heinemann.

PARDO BAZAN, EMILIA, native of Corunna, September 16, 1851, married in 1868, is one of the most gifted women of the times, and in fame the Madame de Staël of Spain. She belongs to the Naturalistic school of novelists; does not, however, lack tinges of idealism. Her critical power is manifest in the review, _El Teatro Critico_, for three years the product of her pen alone, and the issuing of which, it is to be regretted, she has—owing to stress of work—suspended for this year (1894). She is, furthermore, editor of a series of works of special reference to women (whether of fiction, or of scientific, historical, and philosophical interest), for which she has already translated John Stuart Mill’s “The Subjection of Women,” while she promises, among other volumes, a Spanish version of “Adam Bede.” The little tale “First Love” is given here as being suitable for this volume, rather than as typical of Doña Emilia’s pen. Her works are too numerous to be here recounted.

“PEDIGREE OF FOOLS.” This was versified at a later date.

PÉREZ GALDOS, BENITO, born in Las Palmas (the Canary Isles) in 1845, came to Madrid in 1863, where he took his degree in law. His fame rests upon the “Epistodios Nacionales,” in which, following in the steps of Erckmann-Chatrian, he illustrates his national history in a series of romances. The first series, to which the volume “Gerona” belongs, covers the period from the battle of Trafalgar to the entry of Ferdinand VII. into Spain (1814). Unlike his French prototypes, Pérez Galdos is furnished with no small amount of humour. In “Gerona” the grim horrors of the siege are well contrasted by passages, such as those given, and a third, in which the two boys Manolet and Badolet catch rats in the cellars, in danger themselves of being devoured by the army of famishing rodents, which are led by a huge fat rat, abused by the boys under the name of Napoleon, and which they finally catch and propose to sell in the market for at least ten reals (2s.) Pérez Galdos changes his residence according to the scenes of the subject at which he is working, and is at present at Santander.

PINEDO, LUIS DE. See _Book of Jokes_.

“POEMA DEL CID.” This grand old poem, unquestionably the oldest in the Spanish language, is by Sanchez, who first published it in 1779, given as early a date as the middle of the twelfth century, about fifty years after the death of the Cid. Some spirited fragmentary translations by Mr. John Hookham Frere are appended to the early edition of Southey’s “Chronicle of the Cid,” and the whole laid before the reader in verse and somewhat epitomised prose by Mr. John Ormsby, whose work is invaluable to English students of the poem, not only for its true rendering, but for the fine introduction. An attempt at old ballad language and style may perhaps be excused in the extract selected, by reason that this, the most humorous incident in the poem, had unfortunately not been put into verse by either Mr. Hookham or Mr. Ormsby, and a fresh departure seemed desirable to avoid invidious comparison. The passage, alas! is also considerably abridged to suit the requirements of the present volume. For the rendering of the old Spanish I have to thank the valuable tuition of Señor Don José Balari y Jovany, of the University of Barcelona, to whom, as a philologist of no small merit, attention has already been drawn in England. The following passage is from Ford’s “Guide to Spain”—Burgos Cathedral. “In the ante-room of the chapter-house is preserved _El Cofre del Cid_, a trunk clamped with iron, and now attached to the north wall, which the Cid filled with sand, and then pledged to the Jews as full of gold, for a loan of 600 marks, which he afterwards honestly repaid.”

POLO, JACINTO, flourished in 1630, and is known as the composer of some lyrical poetry and author of prose satires in the style of Quevedo’s Visions. It has, however, been doubted by Gayangos and other critics if “The University of Love and School of Interest,” from which Ticknor gives the extract “Aunts,” was written by Polo.

POPULAR SONGS. Long romances or ballads, like those of the olden times, are also sung in the streets of Spain by the blind minstrels. The so-called popular songs are, however, of the kind here given, which bear a strong family likeness to the _stornelli_ and _rispetti_ of the Italian peasantry, and which, illustrating the origin of the word _ballad_, are danced to. The verses often embody quaint conceits. The stones in the pavement quarrelling over which should be trodden on by a fair maid is not very far-fetched for a Spanish compliment. A Spanish lover will adore anything that has the remotest connection to his lady-love, and a record “flor” (flower = sweet saying) which hails from South America is, “Blessed be even the razor with which your father shaves himself.” The accompaniment to the songs is in dancing rhythm thrummed on the ubiquitous guitar, and often marked by the castanets of the dancers, or, in Oriental fashion, by the clapping of hands of the bystanders. The air sung consists of three or four phrases at most, each a combination of nasally intoned, long-sustained notes ending in odd twists and turns.

PORTUGUESE EPITAPHS. The Castilians always sharpen their wits on the Portuguese, who, together with the Biscayans, are laughed at for their simplicity. The Portuguese is also accused of a love of brag. This joking is carried so far that, to take off the poor Portuguese, anecdotes and epitaphs (as in those selected) are written in the Portuguese language by Spaniards. The Andalusian also plays the braggart, and is a reputed payer of fantastic and exaggerated compliments (_flores_) to the fair sex. The Gallegan is credited with the shrewdness of the Yorkshireman.

PROVERBS. Many of these “wise sayings drawn from long experience,” to which the Spanish people are especially addicted, are given in the English rendering of an old book on Spanish proverbs in the library of the British Museum.

QUEVEDO, FRANCISCO GOMEZ DE, the eminent Spanish satirist, was born of a distinguished family at Madrid, 1580. He was sent early to the University of Alcalá, where he took his degree at the age of fifteen. He mixed much in fashionable society, but in consequence of a duel he was compelled to quit the court and repair to Naples, where he was received by the Spanish envoy, the Duke of Osuna, who not only retained him in his service, but procured his pardon at Madrid. On the fall of his patron Quevedo returned to court; but scarcely had he arrived there when he was arrested, and confined for three years to his country seat, upon the charge of being the author of certain libels against the Government. In 1641 he was again arrested on the charge of libel, and cast into prison, where he remained for nearly two years. He died sometime after his release in September, 1645. Quevedo was undoubtedly one of the best writers of his age, both in prose and verse. His longest prose satire, “The History and Life of the Great Sharper, Paul of Segovia,” first printed in 1626, belongs to the style of fiction invented by Mendoza in his “Lazarillo,” and has most of the characteristics of its class. His “Sueños,” or Visions, are equally famous, and are extremely original. His works were translated into English by Sir Roger L’Estrange, and passed through about ten editions in forty years, and again by Stevens about the close of the last century. This most original of Spanish writers (excepting Cervantes) distinguished himself by his extraordinary versatility of talent. His poems, collected under the title of “El Parnaso Español,” consist of lyrical poems, satires, burlesque pieces, and more than a thousand sonnets of remarkable beauty.

RIBOT Y FONTSERRÉ. The tales current abroad of the eccentricities of Englishmen are many. A Spaniard will gravely tell a tale of how an Englishman, after a serious railway accident on the Continent, in which his valet was killed, gathered together the fragments of the latter’s body, packed them in the man’s trunk, and despatched this to the family of the deceased. The tale of the somewhat Dundrearyesque lord may, however, be based on fact, for the story is known in England. It is here given from a Spanish humorous publication of the first half of this century. A veteran in journalism like Mr. Sala would probably know the origin, and name the hero of the story.

ROJAS, FRANCISCO DE (ROJAS Y ZORRILLA), flourished during the greater part of Calderon’s life, and may have survived him. He was born in Toledo, and in 1641 was made a Knight of the Order of Santiago; but when he died is not known. Unless he began his career too early to be a mere follower, he certainly belongs to Calderon’s school. He is perhaps most successful in tragedies, of which the best play is “None below the King.” This work still maintains a position on the stage, and is worth reading if only as an example of the extraordinary sense of honour and allegiance entertained by Spaniards in those past times.

RUEDA, LOPE DE, is the author of four comedias, two pastoral colloquies (“Timbria” is one), and minor works, all written for representation, and which were unquestionably acted before public audiences by the strolling company Lope de Rueda led about. The period in which he flourished is probably between 1544 and 1567. In spite of belonging to the then despised and rejected profession of the stage, he was interred with honour in the great cathedral of Cordova.

SANTOS, FRANCESCO, a native of Madrid, died not far from the year 1700. Between 1663 and 1697 he gave to the world sixteen volumes of different kinds of works for the popular amusement. The oldest of the series is “Dia y Noche en Madrid,” the hero of which, a stranger, falls into the hands of a not over-honest servant, who undertakes to serve as guide to him in Madrid. “Truth on the Rack; or, the Cid come to Life again,” is an allegorical work (from it the tale “La Tarasca” is drawn), and is amusing in that the Cid on his return to earth is much disgusted with the traditions and ballads about himself.

SEGOVIA, ANTONIO MARIA, who signed his articles with the pseudonym “The Student,” has the fame of being the most classic in style of the Spanish periodical essayists of the nineteenth century.

SELGAS Y CARRASCO, JOSÉ, was born in Murcia in 1824, and died at Madrid, 1882. He was one of the contributors to the famous periodical _El Padre Cobos_, and exhibits an inimitable serious humour in his volumes of “Loose Leaves” (“Hojas Sueltas”).

TIMONEDA, JUAN DE, a bookseller, one of the founders of the popular theatre in Spain, flourished in the year 1590. He was also an early writer of Spanish tales, his first attempt being “Patrañuelo,” a small work which drew its material from widely different sources—some being found in the Gesta Romanorum, others, like the story of Griselda, from Boccaccio, another, familiar to English readers by the ballad of “King John and the Abbot of Canterbury,” probably from Sacchetti. Timoneda was a friend of Lope de Rueda, whose works he edited.

TRUEBA, ANTONIO DE, born Christmas, 1819 (?), of poor and respectable parents, within the jurisdiction of the province of Biscay, was sent, at the age of fifteen, to work in a hardware store in Madrid, where he spent all his spare time and hours, stolen from sleep, in reading and writing, until he began to publish, and finally dedicated himself wholly to literature. He is the exponent of humble Spanish life, especially of the country people, and if he is somewhat too rose-coloured in his views, it is, perhaps, not an unpardonable fault. His collection of popular songs was received with enthusiasm, and though he is now out of vogue as an author, the songs and his prose works, of which most are based upon folk-tales, will always be of value for the researches of Folk-lore.

VALERA, JUAN, was born in the province of Cordova on October 18, 1824. He had aristocratic connections, and was early in life enrolled in the diplomatic service, to which he owes his great familiarity with European literature. He subsequently entered politics, and until the age of forty-two had been able to give up to authorship but his hours of leisure, to which we owe his critical studies and translations. “Pepita Jiménez,” his first novel, was produced in 1874, and was a “success unparalleled in the history of modern Spanish literature.” To continue in the words of Mr. Edmund Gosse:—“This book still remains, after the large development of fiction in Spain, the principal, the typical Spanish novel of our days.... It has become a classic in the lifetime of its author, and is studied, imitated, analysed as a book which has passed beyond all danger of the vicissitudes of fashion, and which will unquestionably survive as one of the glories of the national literature.... ‘Pepita Jiménez’ is Spain itself in a microcosm—Spain with its fervour, its sensual piety, its rhetoric and hyperbole, its superficial passion, its mysticism, its graceful extravagance.” Later novels are “El Comendador Mendoza,” “Doña Luz,” and “Doctor Faustino.” Valera occupies a pre-eminent position as politician, journalist, author, and critic, and is at present at Vienna as Spanish ambassador to the Austrian Court.

VICENTE, GIL, a Portuguese, but who ranks among Spanish dramatists, as he wrote ten plays in Castilian. (It was a not uncommon practice for Portuguese authors to employ Castilian. Saa de Miranda, the pastoral poet and contemporary of Gil Vicente, wrote six of his eight eclogues in the more sonorous Castilian.) Gil Vicente flourished as a writer for the stage from 1506 to 1536; died in 1557.

YRIARTE (IRIARTE), TOMAS DE, born on the island of Tenerife in 1750, but educated mostly at Madrid, owes his reputation chiefly to his literary fables, the influence of which was much needed in the age of bad writing in which they appeared, and in which he showed originality by adapting the attributes of animals to only one class of men, namely, authors, and not mankind at large, as had always been done before. Yriarte died in 1791.

ZAYAS Y SOTOMAYOR, MARIA DE. The only information we can gather respecting this lady is founded on the authority of the industrious bibliographer, Nicolas Antonio, who assures us that she was a native of Madrid, and that she composed two series of novels, under the titles of “Novelas Amorosas i exemplares,” and “Novelas i Seraos.” She is also mentioned by Lope de Vega in his “Laurel de Apolo” in very flattering terms. The style and character of this write novels exhibit much of the ease and elegance, with no little of the freedom, of Boccaccio; they abound with incident, both humorous and tragic, and with chivalric or amorous adventure. With little artifice, however, in the plot, and less study of character, there are some striking and effective scenes; while the situations are often well conceived, and the suspense is maintained throughout so as to please or surprise us. “The Miser Chastised” is perhaps the only one of her novels in which the writer wholly adopts a comic tone and spirit, without any touches of a more sentimental kind. With some humour, this story combines considerable ease and originality. Under the same title as the foregoing appeared a drama from the pen of Don Juan de la Hoz Mota, a Spanish dramatic writer of some celebrity, who succeeded in exposing the vice of avarice on the stage in strong and natural colours, and with such bold and happy strokes of ridicule, as almost to merit its being placed in the same rank with the famous “Avare” of Molière (Thomas Roscoe). Doña Maria de Zayas, flourished in the year 1637. ZORRILLA, JOSÉ, born at Valladolid, February 21, 1817, poet _par excellence_ of traditionary and legendary subjects, has for years been prime favourite of the Spanish people, and his inexhaustible vein of poetry showed but scanty signs of diminishing even in the last years of a hoary old age. His most popular work, “Don Juan Tenorio” (1844), a drama in verse treating of the notorious Don Juan, hero of Tirso de Molina’s “Seville Deceiver,” of Byron’s poem, and Mozart’s opera, is a masterpiece of harmonious and flowing verse, and of fine dramatic effect. It is played annually in every town where there is a theatre throughout all Spain on the eve of All Saints’ Day, when the scene in which the bodies rise from their graves and come to the banquet of Don Juan and his boon companions upon the former’s blasphemous invitation is awaited with breathless horror by crowded houses. Other long poems are the “Legend of the Cid,” and “The Cobbler and the King.” Zorrilla died the 23rd of January, 1893.

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XXXVIII. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION. AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE GROWTH OF RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. By EDWIN DILLER STARBUCK Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Education, Leland Stanford Junior University.

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* XLVI. MODERN ORGANIC CHEMISTRY. By DR. C. A. KEANE, D.SC., PH.D., F.I.C. With Diagrams. *

IBSEN’S DRAMAS.

EDITED BY WILLIAM ARCHER.

THREE PLAYS TO THE VOLUME.

12mo, CLOTH, PRICE $1.25 PER VOLUME.

“_We seem at last to be shown men and women as they are; and at first it is more than we can endure.... All Ibsen’s characters speak and act as if they were hypnotised, and under their creator’s imperious demand to reveal themselves. There never was such a mirror held up to nature before: it is too terrible.... Yet we must return to Ibsen, with his remorseless surgery, his remorseless electric-light, until we, too, have grown strong and learned to face the naked—if necessary, the flayed and bleeding—reality._”—SPEAKER (London).

VOL. I. “A DOLL’S HOUSE,” “THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH,” and “THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY.” With Portrait of the Author, and Biographical Introduction by WILLIAM ARCHER.

VOL. II. “GHOSTS,” “AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE,” and “THE WILD DUCK.” With an Introductory Note.

VOL. III. “LADY INGER OF ÖSTRÅT,” “THE VIKINGS AT HELGELAND,” “THE PRETENDERS.” With an Introductory Note.

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VOL. VI. “PEER GYNT: A DRAMATIC POEM.” Authorised Translation by WILLIAM and CHARLES ARCHER.

The sequence of the plays in _each volume_ is chronological; the complete set of volumes comprising the dramas thus presents them in chronological order.

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* THIS IS THE BEST AND CHEAPEST EDITION OF IBSEN.

NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See note on _Isla_.]

[Footnote 2: See note on _Newspaper Humour_.]

[Footnote 3: Blanco Garcia, the latest authority upon modern Spanish literature, ignores the English periodical essayists, and ascribes the introduction of this style of literature into Spain to the amusing and humorous work, “Ermite de la Chaussée d’Antin,” of M. de Jouy (d. 1846), which work, however, was, according to Gustave Masson, written in imitation of the _Spectator_.]

[Footnote 4: This last edition of 1863, enlarged and corrected by reference to a German annotated translation and to the Spanish translation (with ample notes) of his first edition by Don Pascual de Gayangos and Enrique de Vedia.]

[Footnote 5: That a canoness is a woman who enjoys a prebend, without being obliged to make any vows, or renounce the world, may be unknown to some readers.]

[Footnote 6: Meaning, of course, the sun.]

[Footnote 7: Does not appear in this extract.]

[Footnote 8: Don Lope de Figuerroa, who figures also in the _Amar despues de la Muerte_, was (says Mr. Ticknor) “the commander under whom Cervantes served in Italy, and probably in Portugal, when he was in the _Tercio de Flandes_, the Flanders regiment, one of the best bodies of troops in the armies of Philip II.,” and the very one now advancing, with perhaps Cervantes in it, to Zalamea.]

[Footnote 9: Count Julian, governor of the provinces on both sides of the Straits of Gibraltar, to avenge himself on King Roderick for dishonouring his daughter, the famous La Cava (also called Florinda) of the Spanish ballads, invited (711 A.D.) the Moors into Spain.]

[Footnote 10: The street singers of Spain are invariably recruited from the large army of the blind.]

[Footnote 11: A stick about a foot in length, wound round with gay ribbon or strips of coloured paper, and with a barbed dart at the point. The great feat is to stick a pair of banderillas, at one and the same time, one in each side of the bull, just above the shoulder.]

[Footnote 12: San Antonio is the patron saint of animals (St. Anthony and his pig), and reference to this saint is a favourite Spanish jest. To tell a youth his saint’s day is St. Anthony is equal to saying, “You are a donkey.”]

[Footnote 13: Garbanzos—chick-peas.]

[Footnote 14: A generous red wine.]

[Footnote 15: “_La reja._” In Spanish houses the large casements of the ground floor are all heavily barred, permitting the windows in the hot weather to be wide open without fear of intrusion. _La reja_ is to Spain in æsthetic value (with regard to love scenes) what the balcony is to Italy.]

[Footnote 16: _Solemnisima coquetuela._]

[Footnote 17: The Giralda is the celebrated cathedral tower of Seville, built by a Moor 1196.]

[Footnote 18: The Cid’s famous charger.]

[Footnote 19: The Spanish Ellen Terry.]