Don Francisco de Bringas y Caballero had a second-class
clerkship in one of the most ancient of the royal bureaus. He
belonged to a family which had held just such offices for time
out of mind. "Government employees were his parents and his
grandparents, and it is believed that his great-grandparents,
and even the ancestors of these, served in one way and another
in the administration of the two worlds." His wife Dona
Rosalia Pipaon was equally connected with the official class,
and particularly with that which had to do with the domestic
service of the royal abodes. Thus, "on producing her family
tree, this was found to show not so much glorious deeds of war
and statesmanship as those humbler doings belonging to a long
and intimate association with the royal person. Her mother had
been lady of the queen's wardrobe, her uncle a halberdier of
the royal guard, her grandfather keeper of the buttery, other
uncles at various removes, equerries, pages, dispatch-bearers,
huntsmen, and managers of the royal farm at Aranjuez, and so
forth and so on.... For this dame there existed two things
wholly Divine; namely, heaven and that almost equally
desirable dwelling-place for the elect which we indicate by
the mere laconic word 'the Palace.' In the Palace were her
family history and her ideal; her aspiration was that Bringas
might obtain a superior post in the royal exchequer, and that
then they should go and take up their abode in one of the
apartments of the second story of the great mansion which were
conceded to such tenants." The above is from 'Tormento.' In
the next succeeding novel, 'La de Bringas,' this aspiration is
gratified; the Bringas family are installed in the Palace, in
the quarters assigned to the employees of the royal household.
The efforts of two of their acquaintances to find them, in the
puzzling intricacies of the place, are thus amusingly
described.