The Spanish dancer : being a translation from the original French by Henry L. Williams of Don Caesar de Bazan (14 page)

"This cannot be a prison, though attached to the house of correction, for this never was prison fare, a dish of ortolans prepared in sauce after the imperial mode, such as can emanate solely from the first cuisine of Madrid; venison, teal, mountain pigeons; no prison fare."

"Is it a monastery?"

"Up aloft it does look monastic—^but here on our level some wine is left, and it is choice. Now, in a monastery refectory there is no good wine, and if there were, they would not have left a drop. No, my darhng angel, this is not a monastery!"

"What place can it be, then, into which to drag sucb blue-'blooded beings as our select selves?"

"My seraphic one, it does not amount to a fly-specH t\rhere we are. Suffice it, that we have done precisely

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what the eminent Don Jose has laid down; and who thinks to censure a prime minister? He sent a coach for us, quite up to our style "

"The coac'h-and-four was quite good enough, and I know my rights."

"The driver said he was ordered to take us somewhere, and put us down there. Why have we been set down somewhere? If the delay is to be long before an elucidation, I shall bend to consoling myself," and he proceeded to lift a bottle to his parched lips.

"Armeric! desist! there is a waiter in the room!** shrieked the marchioness.

"That is only Don Jose's man—who has, I warrant, seen his master drink out of the pail when it was summer-heat. If he eyes me sourly, it is because he had his hand on this bottle for himself."

"This is all very well, in obedience to the king's first minister, but as regards Don Jose, who is only of your own rank, why should you consent to be his mere puppet?"

"I am not a puppet! the Castello-Rotondos— • —"

"Yes, I have had their exploits at the time when the Cid was their armor-bearer drummed into me. It seems to me that you can do nothing without him. All you possess seems at liis nod and beck."

"All but my adored wife."

"Pooh, pooh," but she was flattered.

"A rash hand—a rough word to her, and out flies the Sword of my forefathers "

"So far, that you would not recover it in time to transfix the insulter."

"Subtility of fence! You ladies would know nothing abo'ut such manly matters. I am afraid, like all dames of the court, neist of ingrates, that you despise that sacred

sentiment which goes by the euphonious name of gratitude!"

"Gratitude? I find that the art of ingratiating thrives best with one in the palace."

"What were we before we were taken up by this rising poHtician?"

"Happy."

"Happy, perhaps, but nobodies—vegetables in the rural districts. I bore a proud old title; the Castello-Rotondos were known like the two Castles of Castile, but I was in a corner, cobwebbed over. You were radiant with loveliness, but your charms were like a rich flower's lost among weeds. My merits were going to seed—your beauty was unseen. Was it not Don Jose of Santarem who, running against me at a hunt in my grounds of the Round-Tower, accepted my apology for being nearly unhorsed, and assumed me that he would die if I did not come to court?"

"He certainly remembered you when you went tip to town with me."

"Yes, he included you in the invitation. He said that the queen was not the mirthfulest of monarchs' consorts; that she required cheering up, and that you, with your bright sallies, would stir up as my ancestors did the enemy in making upon them their sallies from the Round-Tower."

"He gave you a couTt appointment," said the marchioness, smiling.

"A sinecure; to keep the maps in order in the Escurial library. I was the royal cartulari'st and chartographer honorary. That is a link on a chain whic'h lengthens it out and made my neighbors glare with envy when they saw the badge on my right shoulder. A golden compass stuck on a map of the world, with Madrid the center."

114 Wedded Behind Prison Bars.

"Then it was the marquis who g-ave you a higher sfep,-* said the lady, with the same flattering smirk.

"Yes, I am now, still thanks to Santarem, chief keepec of the regal hennery—I mean, pheasantry—the aviarisl royal."

"But why should your talents be restricted to raising Indian fowl?"

"My lady, I do not raise them—I eat them. I confess that I never had so many friends as since I had the excess of golden pheasants to bestow among my acquaintances."

"But to hatch turkeys."

"Madam, do not speak with inconsiderateness of incubation. For these honors, which my brother peer haS kindly showered upon me, I have vowed to devote myself to forwarding his wishes, and I may say that never would he have been police minister without my strenuous exertions, and not premier but for my trumpeting his claim for the exalted post."

"Then," said the lady, pouting, "he might at leasfi create you keeper of the seals instead of the Indian gamecocks "

"Bless us and save us, the lord chancellor does not keep seals of the ocean—^^they are, the Lord conserve your girlish guilelessness; they are wax stamps of quite another kidney. So I meet his wishes and comply with them all, however incomprehensible they are to us."

"Well, he certainly acted a kind part in finding for us our long-lost darling, Maria,"

"That is so—he had great daring to go in among thte gypsies to wrench from the Duke of Egypt the final answer, w'hich they had fobbed me off from for years. But there is no refusing anything to a minister of police. The criminals may well be fearful of the lieutenant-Timr inal."

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"Only, we have but his word for it—suppose not that he, a noble, would deceive a brother noble, but that those necromancers have deceived him. This girl suddenly-produced from the shadowy world of vagabondage might be a changeling palmed off on us by the sons of Ana-oias."

The old marquis shuddered, but quickly replied:

*'Well, I am so eager to see our darling again that I would be easily cheated—I admit so much, but you, the mother! ah, the mother's instinct is not to be deluded. .You will recognize your Maria, or I will go in eternal txile to the Holy Land!"

"Without me? What would I and your daughter be, mhh no mind so clever as yours, no sword so keen and ready to defend us in case we were insulted?"

"Your honor menaced!" cried Castello-Rotondo3. "Let a breath attack your honor, or my child's, and this g'ood blade, made at Fuentes by the celebrated sword-smith, the cross-eyed Leon, would leap O'Ut of its case! You do not tell me that any one has lampooned my own, my beauteous ?"

*'Well, not yet, but I foresee that, in accepting this •tray child, educated in the hedge-school and finished in the thieves' kitchen of the Bohemians, we are laying ourselves open to many a slur at our being easily gulled. iAgainst me, who can raise a whisper, but this waif, this foundling, who becomes our fondling so mysteriously and suddenly—I am afraid, my own, that you will want to defend with both short and long sword."

*'Tush! You will be the best defender of our pet! You, who have with your virtue, repelled those fulsome tongues which for thirty years have merely treasured the hope to speak to you of your attractions. Time himself treads on your cheek without leaving a footprint; your features are unalterable; your beauty is still the base for

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the deepest-drunk toast at our table, where the wine of my own vintage supplements the culls out of the royal pheasantryl"

"You may kiss me for that sentiment!—but on the hand, pray, for the horrid gnats out of the river-pools have specked my cheek. I have had to inundate it with balm, m spite of my aversion for toilet devices."

"Yes, you would detest artifice. But, hark!"

"There is somebody coming **

"With a torch!" . "That will enlighten us!"

"Enlighten!—torch ? What a fine wit she has! Well," chuckled the old beau, "I wedded that woman because she chaffed me into the union, and I believe that I shall go off to the blest mansions all the gayer because she will let slip some brilliancy at my deathbed!"

"Now," said she, smoothing her laces as a hen strokes (down her rufHed feathers, "we shall discover where we are, and perhaps meet this errant daughter of ours!"

"Indeed, it is Don Jose, and he is not alone!"

"He has a young woman with him!"

"But she is in bridal costume!" cried the marchioness as the Marquis of Santarem appeared, preceded by two pages bearing flambeaus, cermoniously escorting Mari-tana, still veiled as when united in matrimony to the happy-unhappy Don Caesar.

"I wish you joy," said the lord of Santarem, presenting Maritana, who made a courtesy as finished as the old lady's, though less stiffly and with the elegance of a trained dancer. "The king, at my instance, has added to your posts that of Master of the Warrens !"

"Tlie head warrener? I am to have the royal rabbits under my charge. Oh, my!" and Castello-Rotondo clasped his hands in rapture.

"As well make him keeper of the whole menagerie at

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once!" grumbled the lady, who saw that the stranger was uncommonly handsome and very young-. >

"Lady fair," continued the marquis, bowing to her and smiling as if she had spoken the most pleasant remark, "the king has not forgotten your exemplary conduct, which keeps the maids of honor in due trim. He begs your acceptance of the late hunting-box at Las Delices, with servants, equipment, all in full order, where he further beseeches you to make it pleasant for your daughter, the Donna Maria of Castello-Rotondo "

''Daughter!" exclaimed the couple in a breath.

Maritana unveiled, for the good nature under the senile silliness was clear to her piercing eyes. Her surpassing brightness and winsomeness completed the capture. The marquis thrilled all over, and his wife melted. Their countenances beamed with smiles.

"Good !" Don Jose spoke to himself. "A thousand ducats on it my fiction is the truth! The Duke of Eg>-pt did kidnap the old fool's child, and this is the one. I could have sworn from the outset that Maritana was no plebeian. Good! good! I wanted a lady by birth to rule the king, and by so ruling let me rule! I am not the first premier who used the petticoat as a shield and overcame all opposition by a woman's fan! The sword is for brutes; the pen for bookmen; but the fan, it is the instrument for which Archimedes of the court alone wish. It moves the world of fashion and politics, and there is no other !"

Still the two women, insensibly nearing, did not come to contact. It was like two feathers on the pond—they were attracted, but yet something repelled.

"Don Jose de Santarem declines any thanks for this blessed reunion," said he, loftily. "It is to the persistent researches of the marquis that the recovery of your daughter is due. At the last moment I gave a final impul^ which pushes the dear Maritana into her mother's arms.

I hold all the proofs, which the marquis can verify. But I am overzeaious—I should have relied on the heaven whic& has relented in its spite! The voice of nature stirs that bosom—that heart of a thousand! Mother, embrace your child ! Father, thank Heaven for this restoration !"

Maritana forgot all but that she had yearned many and many a year for a mother! She opened her arms and sank swooning with joy upon the old marchioness* scraggy neck. The skinny arms met behind her back, and the Marquis of Castello-Rotondo trotted around the pais like a tailor admiring a new suit on a beau, weeping and uttering little cries of delight like a hen which had found a swan's egg and flattered herself that she had laid it.

"Our child!" they both muttered.

"How fair—the image of her maternal progenitress at that age!" exclaimed the courtier.

"I see myself in her!" added the lady.

"Capital!" muttered the minister. "I have made manjj grin with a skillful lie, but this time, I believe with truth, I have filled that trio with happiness! This will bring » blessing upon the rest of my plan!"

The clock struck seven in the prison yard and the reverberations entered the hall.

"You vv'ill therefore take yourself with your new-found child to the hunting pavilion, with which the king favors you! It is convenient to the court, where, as soon as she has rubbed off the asperities gained in conventional life, the Lady Maritana, Countess of Garofa, will assume her place!"

"The Countess of Garofa?"

"Undoubtedly countess! for I was present as best ma» at her happy wedding with my cousin. You see, I have nothing to win thanks upon—I was only acting for th» gain of the family!"

"Then we become relatives ?"

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"Marquis, we are brothers!" and Jose shook the other's hand demonstratively.

"I see, I see! The king- bestows the hunting-box upon my daughter for the sake of her husiband—his favorite, as his father was the last monarch's?"

"Well, no ! Out of respect for his memory!"

*'His memory ?"

"Exactly ; for " he held his hand up to beg attention.

The silence was broken by a volley of firearms, which sent dull echoes through the thick prison air.

"Great heavens ! Musketry !"

"A salvo of joy!" corrected Jose, with a reassuring smile. "In honor of the marriage."

"But are we not to see our happy son-in-law?" ' "Not yet—marquis; he has gone -on the king's service to another world!"

j "Oh, the New World, where all brave Spaniards go?" ! "Precisely—the new world to him! Take your daughter to your new residence. I will notify you when you may present your thanks to his majesty."

He placed them in charge of his footmen to be conducted to the carriage-and-four still waiting-. Then, going to the window, he peered out between the curtains at the prostrate form on the parade-ground, with two penitent friars crouching over it and unrolling the cere cloth.

"Good-night, Cousin Csesar!" said he, waving his hand.

CHAPTER X,

THE HUSBAND OF PSYCHE.

When the sovereigns of Spain becatnie enervated aind, inistead of risking their lives in battles, lost only time in petty pursuits, such as the shooting of small birds, since falconry vi^as too exacting a pastime, the gunsmiths conr-trived lighter and surer firearms. The princes first to carry fowling-pieces worthy the title were of Spain.