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.