After the complete re-establishment of the health of the countess’s son,
came the evening fixed upon to receive Maria. Some of the persons
invited had already assembled, when Raphael entered precipitately.
“My cousin,” he said, “I come to ask a favor. If you refuse I will take
to my bed, under the pretext of a horrible headache.”
“Jesus!” replied the countess, “how can I obviate so great a
misfortune?”
“You shall know immediately: yesterday I received a letter from one of
my comrades at the embassy, Viscount St. Leger.”
“Take away the St. and the Viscount, and leave the Leger only,” remarked
the general.
“Well,” said Raphael, “my friend, who, according to my uncle, is neither
saint nor viscount, introduced an Italian prince to me.”
“A prince! Well,” phlegmatically remarked the general, “why do you not
call things by their proper names? He will prove, probably, to be one of
the Carbonari, a propagandist, a veritable scourge. And where is this
prince?”
“I am ignorant,” replied Raphael. “All I know is, that the letter says,
‘I will feel under a thousand obligations if you will have the goodness,
my friend, to introduce to the person I now present to you the most
beautiful and the most amiable of your ladies, your most choice
reunions, the most remarkable antiquities of ‘Seville, the beautiful,’
this ‘garden of Hesperides.’”
“The garden of Alcazar he should rather have said,” observed the
marchioness.
“It is probable. When I saw myself charged with the accomplishment of
this task, without knowing to which saint to address myself, I caught
the luminous idea to address myself to my cousin, and to ask her
permission to bring the prince to her _soirée_; because, in this way he
can make the acquaintance of ladies the handsomest and most amiable,
society the choicest, and,” he added, in a low voice, pointing to the
_tresillo_ table, “antiquities the most notable in Seville.”
“Take care, my mother is there,” murmured the countess, laughing
secretly. “You are an insolent fellow. And,” she added, in a loud voice,
“I will have much pleasure in seeing your _protégé_.”
“Good! very good!” exclaimed the general, striking the cards violently.
“Take care of them, open to them wide the doors, place them all at their
ease; they will accept all this pleasure at your house, and finish by
mocking you.”
“Believe me, uncle,” replied Raphael, “that we have our revenge. It is
true they pretend admirably. Some foreigners arrive among us with the
single object of searching for adventures, persuaded that Spain is the
classic land for this. Last year I had one of these monomaniacs in my
care. He was an Irishman, related to Lord W.”
“Yes, as I to the Grand Turk,” said the general, sarcastically.
“The spirit of the hero of La Mancha,” continued Raphael, “took
possession of my Irishman, whom I will call _Green Erin_, in default of
his true name, which I have forgotten. An extraordinary affection for
robbers had brought him to Spain. He wished to see them in all their
strength. The pleasure of being robbed was his fixed idea, his caprice,
the object of his travels. He would have given six thousand sacks of
potatoes to see at his side Don José Maria, in his magnificent
Andalusian costume, splendidly mounted, with buttons of doubloons. He
brought, at all risk for José, a poignard, with handle of gold, and a
pair of pistols.”
“To arm our enemies?” cried the general. “This is his great desire.
Always the same.”
“He wished to go to Madrid,” continued Raphael; “but knowing that a
diligence might have the bad taste to escort him, he decided to depart
in the carriage of a courier. All my arguments to dissuade him were
useless. He went, in fact; and a little beyond Cordova his ardent
desires were realized: he encountered the robbers, but not the robbers
of _bon-ton_--not _fashionable_ robbers like Don José, who sparkles like
a piece of gold, mounted on his fiery chestnut horse. They were little
robbers, marching on foot, common and vulgar. You know what it is to be
vulgar in England? There is no pestilence, no leprosy, which inspires so
much horror in an Englishman as that which is vulgar. Vulgar! at this
word Albion is covered with her densest fog; the dandies have spleen of
the blackest dye; the ladies have the blue-devils; the misses have
spasms; and dressmakers become nervous. Thus it is forbidden as if a
lion approached. He did not fight, however, for his treasures, for these
he had confided to me until his return. What he valued the most was a
branch of willow from the tomb of Napoleon, the satin shoe of a
danseuse, scarcely as big as a nut, and a collection of caricatures of
his uncle, Lord W.”
“Here is detail enough to paint the man,” interrupted the general.
“But I do nothing but chatter,” said Raphael. “Adieu, cousin; I go, but
I will soon return.”
“How, you go away leaving the poor Erin in the hands of the robbers. You
must finish your history,” said the countess.
“I will then tell you, in two words, that the exasperated robbers
ill-treated him, and fastened him to a tree. He was discovered by an old
woman, who transported him to her cabin, where she took a mother’s care
of him during all the illness which his misadventures had brought on
him. I was for some time without any tidings from my friend, and
recollecting the Spanish saying, ‘_Que la esperanza era verde y se la
comió un borrico_’ (‘Hope is green; an ass might feed on it’), I began
to believe that some accident had happened to Green Erin, when I
received a letter from my Irishman, containing all the details of his
romantic history. He instructed me to give six thousand reals to the
woman who had nursed and saved him, so she could not doubt the state of
his fortune: then the toilet left him by the robbers was simply that
which he wore when he came into the world. As you see, the recompense
was becoming. Let us be just; no one can deny the generosity of the
English. But here comes Polo, with an elegy in his eyes. The prince
waits for me. I will make up for being late by running, at the risk of
breaking my nose.” And Raphael disappeared.
“Jesus!” said the marchioness, “Raphael is so restless, he gesticulates
so much, he is witty with such volubility, that I lose half of what he
says.”
“You do not lose any great things,” growled the general.
“Well,” said the countess, “I could love Raphael for the pleasure which
he affords me, if I had never before had a love for every thing that is
good.”
“Here, dear Gracia,” said Eloise, entering and embracing the countess,
“here is Alexander Dumas’ ‘Travels in France.’”
The countess took the book. Polo and Eloise engaged in a long
dissertation upon the works of this writer. Our readers will dispense
with our reporting it here.
“How well the French know how to write!” said Eloise, resuming this
literary dissertation.
“What do they not know how to do, these sons of liberty?” replied Polo.
“But, señorita,” replied the general, “why do you not read Spanish
books?”
“Because every Spanish book bears the seal of a coarse stupidity,”
replied Eloise. “We are deplorably in arrears.”
“What do you think, then, should constitute a writer of merit in this
detestable country,” added Polo, a little piqued, “if we attain eminence
in nothing, if we know only how to plagiarize? How would you that we
revise our country and our manners, if there is to be found nothing
good, nothing elegant, nothing characteristic?”
“At least,” said Eloise, “you do not extol, like the Germans, the
orange-tree, with its flowers and fruits; like the French, the boléro;
and, like the English, the wine of Jerez (sherry).”
“Ah! Eloisita,” cried Polo, enthusiastically; “here is a _spirituelle_
sally! If she is not French, she deserves to be.” And thus speaking,
Polo, as usual, was himself but a plagiarist: he repeated one of the set
phrases of France as an axiom.
The general had the good fortune not to hear this dialogue; they
summoned him to the card-table. Raphael entered, accompanied by the
prince, whom he presented to the countess. She received the stranger
with her usual amiability, remaining seated, according to Spanish usage.
The prince was tall and slender, and he appeared to be about forty-five
years of age; but, beyond his noble title, he possessed no distinction,
either of person or of manners. The society was then complete. All
waited for the _cantora_, with an impatience mixed with some doubt as to
the real value of her talent.
Major Fly threw himself affectedly into a chair near some young ladies,
and cast on them glances as homicidal as the thrusts of a fencing-foil.
Sir John held his eye-glass bent on Rita, who paid no attention to him.
The baron, seated near an old councillor, asked him if the Moors
whitened their houses with chalk.
“I have no documents on this subject,” replied the magistrate. “This
point has not had the advantage of having received the attention of our
historians.”
“What ignorance!” thought the baron.
“What a silly question!” thought the magistrate.
“You have a very beautiful cousin,” said the prince to Raphael.
“Yes,” he replied; “_she is the Ondine of perfumed waters_.”
“And the general whom I see so attentive to the game, and who has an air
so distinguished?”
“He is the retired Nestor of the army. You have not at Pompeii an
antiquity better preserved.”
“And the señora with whom he is playing?”
“His sister, the Marchioness of Guadalcanal, a species of escurial, a
solid assemblage of devout and monarchial sentiments, with a heart
which emanated from the Pantheon of kings without thrones.”
There was suddenly heard a great noise. It was the major, who, on rising
to join Raphael, had upset a vase of flowers. And Raphael cried out,
“The major announces his arrival; without doubt he comes to sigh, like
the pipe of an organ, over the little note the ladies take of his
person.”
“They must be very difficult to please,” remarked the prince; “the major
has a handsome figure.”
“I do not say to the contrary. He is a Samson in strength. But, to begin
with, he has his Delilah, who will soon be legitimately his, thanks to
the millions which tea and opium cast into the coffers of his father.
She waits in the midst of the fogs of his isle, while he amuses himself
under the beautiful sky of Andalusia. Foreigners who visit Spain are all
of one accord in anticipating the pleasures they propose to themselves:
the beauty of the climate, the bull-fights, the oranges, the boléros,
and, especially, their love conquests. What complaints have I heard from
those who came here like Cæsar, and left like Darius!”
During this dialogue, the baron had approached the table, and regarded
the game.
“Madame,” said he to the marchioness, “is the mother--”
“Of my daughter? Yes, sir,” replied the marchioness.
Rita impulsively burst into a fit of laughter.
Raphael, who had stolen away from the major, mixed in the groups of
guests, and soon found himself among some young ladies, of whom several
were his relations. He had in this feminine squad a large party; but
seeing that he had neglected them to devote his attentions to the
strangers who were his cousin’s guests, this evening introduced by him,
were all leagued against him, and had made up their minds to be
revenged.
“Am I transformed to the head of Medusa, that you do not know me?”
demanded Arias.
“Ah! is it you?” said one of the conspirators.
“It seems to me so, Clarita,” replied the young man.
“It is so very long since I have seen you, I did not recognize you
again. How have you been able to tear yourself away from your
strangers?”
“My strangers! I renounce the property.”
“Is it the torments and fatigues these _protégés_ of thine cause thee,
which has given thee already the appearance of old age?”
“Señoritas,” exclaimed Raphael, “is this a declaration of war, a
conspiracy? What have I done?”
As an only response, he was overwhelmed with appeals, which burst forth
in rapid succession, like an explosion of fireworks.
At this moment, the guests who found themselves assembled near the door
of the court separated to permit the duke, leading in the Gaviota, to
enter. Stein followed.