The Spanish dancer : being a translation from the original French by Henry L. Williams of Don Caesar de Bazan (12 page)

"There is something in that! You are no friend to dangle a rope before me! A rope—faugh!"

"By the royal favor, a silk rope has been substituted for the hempen one!" remarked Don Jose, in an irritating, bitter tone.

"Why, death ought to come to a gentleman by a sword-point of scimetar edge! How lonely I should have felt in paradise at being dispatched there direct for killing the infidel, and so making sure of glory! And the fire that slays out of a hand-gun mouth is not to be sneezed at I

But A beastly dog's leash! Yes, my lord, I find I have one request!"

"Name it, my dear!"

"I will leave the gallows to my creditors and the rope to be used first hand on the keeper of the city prison who offered me, a peer, hard cider! But let me be shot offhand by soldiers! This page of mine tells me that they have served out to the guards some very fine arquebuses, fresh from the Parisian smithies, and quick, clean and sure! I will embrace the honor of their first fruits! Who cannot brave death from brave men ? Let me be shot, and meanwhile, let me treat to drink the bold fellows!"

"Drink with your executioners?"

"Don Caesar has drunk with the sheriff who served him with an eviction I I have sipped with sinners, gulped with gypsies, and clanked the cannikin with coach-strippers! A carouse with jailers and marksmen will not sully the Count of Garofa!"

"You shall enjoy your wis'h," said the minister, nodding.

"No deception to a dying man ?" ^

"On the name of the Santarem!"

"We will toast each other! It is rather unfair, for while I can sincerely wish them long life, theirs to the like will be hollow—hollow as this earth!"

"My dear, there shall be such a banquet as will recall the love-feasts of the ancients!" cried Jose, enthusiastic-aliy—"our revels at the college and yours among the wreckers of your argosy !"

"Good! The best eating Is when another foots the bill!" said the other, like a judge. "My gullet v/ill enjoy this feast, for it began to ache at the fear that the rope jyould be greased by vulgar tallow!"

".You are an odd fish!" said the minister, laughing in

spite of himself. "There is nothing else but to present my condition!"

"Ah, I might know there would be the P. S.—'Please settle while the tapster is in the room!' "

When they were solemnly seated again, their seats drawn up closely, so that the page should not overhear their dialogue, Caesar asked what was required of him.

"Not much for a man who might have lost his head. Your hand, Don Caesar!"

"My hand—with absolutely nothing in it?"

"Oh, it will be full! I simply desire that you should marry!"

"Marry? I am over young! No? Over poor? Nbi! Well, I see no use in this! Is all I can bequeath to the Garofas a widow—a wife for an hour and a half?" said he, looking out at the clock.

"Why, this is under the seal!" returned Jose, mysteriously.

"I call it the same! It cannot be for my fortune, because the poor relict would have nothing but my debts and my title—no title deeds! Still, the name of Garofa may have its value! Ah, in your late experience of the world watched by the police, you met a woman wht> wished to become a lady—a countess—I see!"

"It might be so!"

"Well, she shall have it! Anything to oblige a lady!" said the gallant, pufTing his words out like so many feathers.

"I thought so," muttered the other; "poverty may mot be baseness, but it is a branch of knavery!" He rubbed his hands again as if his palms were itchimg.

"A name! My name! It is nothing to me and' the sooner it decks a wedding certificate as my memorial tomb, the better for the survivor, widow, and the grave-stone-'graver! iBesides, I wanted to fill up my timef

Marriag-e is something to do—something which I have not done—and one way to kill the Old Fellow with the grass-cutter and the egg-boiler is as good as another! Another philosophical refleotion, if my coming out as a Plato does not startle you, Jose, in so short a honeymoon We c?miot have any long tiffs!"

"Let us see; you agree to confer the title of Countess of Garofa on my selection "

"As we give a name to a flower, let her be as covered with charms as her laite lamented was with debts! Oh, there goes with it all my claims, rights and interests in the lands of Garofa, if you can set foot on anything worth my setting my hand and seal unto. Well, I did not lose it in the law courts, anyway—only fools and stubborn-heads fatten lawyers! By the bye, what is the lady's name—her pedigree?"

"Seek not a good woman's pedigree!" retorted his cousin, sententiously.

"A good woman! That is something new—a saint in the Garofas at length! Is she young?"

"Do not ask a woman's age."

"I understand your delicacy, and I smile with you. I wager my life—no, that is hardly mine! My name— no, that will soon be another's—the halter which I re-noumce, that the dame is over fifty!"

"No matter."

"Not in the least; the bargain is struck! I am, g"oinig to marry—take a wife, as I used, as a boy, to take physic —with my eyes shut."

"You need not do that. The lady, with the modesty o£ her sex in general and of our race in particular, will wear the orthodox veil, but thick as a Moslem would prescribe, and that will effectually shut out your seeing her attractions."

"Thanks for the delicate consideration shown the

Count of Garofa; as for that to be paid the countess, can you not double the veil, that she shall not see the bride-giroom's groom-of-'the-stable-like condition ?"

"Faith, you are in your traveling-dress, and the affrays —first with the arquebusier captain, and then with the alguasils —have rent it sorely!"

"The legs of the breeches do not match—you see that ? Well, it came about that the tailor I last employed, on saying that he would not drive a needle unless paid in advance, and, having half sent on account, laid befo-e me only one-half the breeches! It is a breach of common decency between tailor and customer^—but, better half a leg than none. I cobbled it up with the other half of an old pair!"

"Do not deplore! You shall have a costume becoming the Count of Garofa! The other cell has been turned into a dressing-room, as the soldiers' messroom has been into a banqueting-hall! You see, you are served in all your suits excellently!"

"If I hear a bad word agtainst your excellency in the country whither I go, for you may have sent a slanderer there already, count on my cramming his calumny down his throat! Now, have with me as you will! Deck me a!S the fatted calf! Crown me with rosy-posies as the pole of May, and lead me to the altar! Epitaph upon the Last and Best Count of Garofa, alias 'the Gay Rover!* who departed this life in his nine-and-twentieth year, regretting it was not by so many revenses changed into ninety-and-two of them!

"All through his life, he gayly spurned Those common bonds which tie men; Yet freely freedom sacrificed To be the slave of Hymen"

"^•Boy,** said Don Jose, to the lad coming respectfully

iatid with some warmth of eye out of his covert, "you are in my service henceforth. This way, cousin, dear!" 1

Caesar lagged a Httle. After the gush of fervor had come second thought, and he muttered under his easy smile:

"What suit does he prosecute for this suit he gives me? Oh, he offers a sausage to secure a whole pig! He fs marrying off an old frump of a housekeeper so as to utilize my death!"

CHAPTER VIII.

PREPARING TO Die.

Don Jose went into the governor's own rooms, which had been handed over to him during his stay.

He refreshed him with wine and feUcitated himself cm his 'astute management. Ordinary diplomatists let men be hanged and make no use of them. His superior tact had converted the useless Don Caesar into a lever to raise his fortunes.

"He will be married and give my peerless Maritana a title in which she will be resplendent, while he trailed it in the mire. Without wishing it or guessing it, he has assisted in the attainment of my highest desires!"

The varlet awaiting his orders was given such as Wiould have the feast for the soldiery got ready, as well as all the preparations for the drumhead wedding in the castle chapel.

After the removal of the barrier to further progress in Don Caesar's execution, Maritana would be titled, and the king might advance his suit without censure at stooping too low. "Garofa" would hide the gypsy brand. The plotter only trembled lest he might be blamed by the queen for using her name in bending the dancing-girl to his course. But he believed that she would in time close her eyes to anything perpetrated against her rival. The only thing was that he must not fan her resentment, or he should lose in the girl his only hold on the jellyfish with a crown known as Carlos, "the royal imbecile."

The clock was on the stroke of six when a courier <:ame to the gates seeking the police minister, who had

Preparing to Die. loi

not yet been prioclaimed minister-in-chief of state, though placed so in the court chronicles.

Jose broke open the packet with some trepidation; such waders in troubled waters a;re ever apprehensive lest they stumble into the deep and meet some sharp which would maim them in their enterprise.

It was the royal pardon, spite of precedent, and the royal word that, this time, forgiveness was debarred.

The truth was that Caesar's family, learning that the king had waived the letter of the decree and allowed the bullet to be substituted for the halter, had taken a step further and so besought, pleaded and bewailed that Don Carlos had relented altogether.

"Caesar is pardoned!" growled the minister. "Luckily this reaches my hand, and not the corregidor's. Poor, weak Charles! But it is well that he should do an occasional kind act in order that his ministers should get applauded now and then! All know the course! A subject is doomed to death—well! but the good king is appealed to and his melting heart is reached—well! Of ■course, the bl'owpipe ministerial did the fusion, and the pardon is writ'ten by the minister and signed by the king, who gets but part the praise. It is sad, but one of those inexplicable counter-tides set in, which will run in the best-governed kingdom: the pardon arrived too late! It is like the dootoir's boy, stopping to play leapfrog and bringing the phial of panacea in time to sprinkle it on the coffin ! What a mournful mishap!" and he wiped his eyes after wiping his lips. *'My poor coz! He was to be turned off to the musket-practice at seven and this pardon will not arrive until eight!"

He buttoned the paper up securely in his inner pocket".

"But you will see that the king and his new prime

minister will be blessed for the exercise of the crown's

finest prerogfative, which, I believe, is also Messire St Peter's!"

While finishing the wine and feeling the diverted paiv don press on his usually petrified heart, hs heard th« soldiers in the yard. Rejoiced by the feast which was to be given to overcome that dread and dismal mood evolved from a m-ilitary execution, they were singing, as they polis'hed th^ir arms to look their best in the culprit's honor:

"With measured step a'nd gloomy brow. Behold the dreadful choice platoon: "Where solemnly dead masses flow To one whose corse will fall eftsoon! But what recks he who meets that call When, like a soldier, still, he'll fall?

With jocund cheek and lightsome gait,

Behold return they who have slain; No dismal chants intimidate

The one who's finished life's campaign. Oh, what shall reck who meets that call And, like a soldier brave, will fall?"

'Jose started with a shock, for in the person who entered he saw not the man already dead in his eyes, but a perfect renewal of all that had made the mad-headed Count of Garofa the idol of the court.

Caesar was attired with the most scrupulous care ia the truly magnificent costume which his cousin had furnished. Nothing could be in more extreme contrast to the miserable, faded, frayed and tousled finery which ho !had discarded. Here was all the sumptuousness which the gloomy monarchs of semi-monastical Spain had vainly ^ught to blot out. Satin, silk, gold and beaded lace, plumes, silk hose, and regalia of the orders of chivalry to which he was entitled'—he was a mannikin for a oo»-Itumer's window but for the manner of his bearing it

It was that of the born aristocrat, used to such pomp from infancy.

It was the bridegroom's dress, 'true; but he resembled more, from a slight seriousness on his brow, that warrior who was wont to don his finest suit when he went into action.

"Ah, coz, the phoenix rises out of the ash heap!" cried he, with overflowing gayety. "Are velvet and gold thrown away upon your kinsman? Do you see, I the more sincerely thank you for this compliment, as who knows but that I may meet St. Michael, king of the warrior angels, and I wish to do credit to my corps!"

"St. Michael! Where you are going, I doubt he was ever!"

"Oh, you are behindband with your Scripture! Did not the sword-bearing archangel chase the fiends into ,Tophet?"

"You will be the figurehead at the banquet, that is positive," continued the prime minister "I have had everything prepared as becomes a marriage of a grandee. Look into the other hall!"

Csesar peeped, and started back from the gorgeous spread. When this prison-house was a Moorish palace, never had its board been loaded with such dainties.

"Wine in flagons of parcel-gilt! This is setting silver apples in basins of gold! I would wish you could create my guests noble, so that they would not be outranked by that Westphalian boar, that right royal buck's haunch, that imperial swan, roasted in its tail! Wine, wine!"

"Then there is nothing lacking?"

"Yes, one thing—one savor, one adornment, one tidbit! Woman, lovely woman! But why did I say woman ? It reminds me of my coming disaster—my marriage!"

"It is true! I will immediately present to you th0 JCountess de Bazan!"

With these words he quitted the apartment, and, allured by the table, Don Caesar passed into the armory hall.

It was hastily, but passably, decorated for the extraordinary ceremony within those gray walls, streaked with the rust of chains. But the soldiers of the tiring-iiie, together with their comrades, gave but a fleeting glance to the man they were about to slay, on beholding the bounteous display.