SIX months after, the Countess de Algar was in her saloon with the marchioness, her mother, occupied in putting a ribbon on her son’s straw hat, when General Santa-Maria entered.

“See, general, how well a straw hat becomes a boy at that age.”

“You spoil this child.”

“What matters it?” said the marchioness. “Do not we all spoil our children, who nevertheless become serious men? Our mother spoilt you also, my brother, and that did not prevent you from becoming what you are.”

“Mamma,” said the child, “wilt thou give me a biscuit?”

“What is this?” cried the general. “Your child tutear’s you? You adopt then, after the French fashion, this te and tu, which corrupts our manners. The grandees of Spain formerly obliged their children to call them ‘excellency.’ It was in the good old time. The tutear, in imitation of the French tutoies, makes children lose the respect they owe to their parents.”

“Eh! general—this innocent creature! Can he distinguish between thou and you?”

“It is taught him.”

“I acknowledge that my children tutear me; and if I had done the same to my mother, I had not less respected nor less loved her.”

“You have always been a good daughter; but the exception proves nothing.”

“General, in spite of your severity, your countenance seems joyous.”

“It is because I have a good piece of news to announce to you. The corvette Iberia, from Havana, has arrived at Cadiz, and to-morrow morning, most probably, we will embrace Raphael. He is fortunate, this Raphael! Hardly had he written us that he desired to revisit Spain, when a magnificent occasion presents itself, and he comes home charged with important dispatches confided to him by the captain-general of Cuba.”

The marchioness and the countess had scarcely time to rejoice at this good news, and to give expression to their happiness, when the door opened, and Raphael threw himself into their arms.

“How happy I am again to see you, my good, dear Raphael!” said the countess to him.

“Jesus!” added the marchioness, “thanks to our lady of Carmen, you are here returned to us. But what idea have you had, you who are rich, to travel by sea, as if it were but a river? I bet you have been sea-sick.”

“That is the least of it; it is nothing but an unpleasant voyage, and I have suffered more from delay and my uneasiness for those I love. I do not know if it be because Spain is a good mother, or because we Spaniards are good sons, but we cannot live far away from our country.”

“It is for both reasons, my dear nephew; it is for both,” repeated the general with ardent satisfaction.

“Cuba is a rich country, is it not, Raphael?” demanded the countess.

“Yes, cousin. Cuba is rich, and it knows how to be so, like a great lady, who has always been one, without ostentation, and parading everywhere its benefits.”

“And the women, do they please you?”

“As a general rule, all women please me: the young, because they are so; the old, because they have been so; and the little girls, because they will be so.”

“Do not generalize so; be more precise.”

“Cousin, the Cuban ladies are charming feminine lazzaroni, covered with muslins and lace, and whose little satin shoes are useless ornaments for the little feet they are destined for, as I have never seen an Havana lady on foot. They speak like nightingale’s singing, live on sugar like bees, and smoke like the chimneys of a steamboat. Their eyes are poems, and their hearts mirrors, without tin-foil. The doleful drama is not written for this country, where the women pass their life lying in a hammock balanced amidst flowers, and fanned by their slaves with fans fringed with flowers of a thousand colors.”

“Do you know that public rumor announces your marriage?”

“Dame Rumor, my dear Gracia, arrogates to herself the royal buffooneries of the olden time. Like them, she tells all that passes in her head without inquiry into the truth. But public rumor has told a lie.”

“They add, that your future wife brings you a fortune of two millions of duros.”

Raphael burst into a fit of laughter.

“Indeed, I remember that the captain-general wished to make me indorse this bill of exchange.”

“And who was to be my future cousin?”

“She was ugly as mortal sin: her left shoulder approached too conspicuously the ear on the same side, while the right shoulder was separated from the ear, its neighbor, by a distance too marked. I therefore refused the indorsement.”

“You were wrong,” said the countess, “above all, knowing that—” She did not finish. She had seen pass over the frank and open countenance of her cousin the expression of a bitter recollection.

“Is she happy?” he demanded.

“As much as one can be in this world. She lives very retired, since above all she expects soon to be a mother.”

“And he?”

“Entirely changed, since the marriage. He is a model of a husband. The family have received him as a returned prodigal son.”

“And Eloisita?”

“Hers is a lamentable history. She secretly espoused a French adventurer, who called himself cousin of the Prince of Rohan, coadjutor of Alexander Dumas, and sent by the Baron Taylor to purchase artistic curiosities, and who, unfortunately, is called Abelard. She saw in the name of her beloved and in her own the decree of destiny commanding their union; and in this man, at the same time literary, artistic, and of princely family, she believed she saw the ideal being who had appeared to her in her beautiful dreams of gold, and a happy future. She regarded her parents, who opposed this union, as the tyrants of a melodrama, of ideas retrograde, and filled with obscurity.”

“And of Spainishism,” added the general, ironically. “And the learned seÑorita, nourished by novels and poetic flowers, united herself to this grand swindler, already twice married, as we learned later. After the lapse of some months, after having dissipated the money she had given him, he abandoned her at Valence, where her unfortunate father went to seek her, and to take her back, dishonored, but neither married, nor widow, nor maid. You see, my nephew, to what leads this mad love of strangerism.”

“And our A. Polo, our eternal point of exclamation, what has become of him?”

“He has become a political man,” replied Gracia.

“I know it,” replied Raphael; “I know also that he has written an ode against the throne, under the pseudo name of Tyranny.”

“Poor tyranny,” said the general, “all the world make fagots of the fallen tree.”

“I know, besides,” pursued Raphael, “that he wrote another poem against Prejudice, in which he comprehended the fatal presage of the number thirteen, the infallibility of the Pope, the upsetting of a salt-cellar, and conjugal fidelity. If I do not cite the text, I cite at least the spirit of this chef-d’oeuvre which public opinion will class among—”

“Among?”

“We will see, when they have destroyed this society, with what they will replace it.”

“I know indeed that our A. Polo has composed a satire (he felt himself carried towards this point, and for a long time he has felt growing on his forehead the horns of Marsias), a satire, I say, he declares it to be an act of hypocrisy, all claims of tithes, or the rights of convents.”

“Eh! Well, my dear nephew,” said the general, “these lucubrations will give him sufficient merit to be received in an opposition journal.”

“I understand that much, general, and I can imagine what will happen; it is a comedy played every day: he made of his pen the jaw-bone of an ass, and, armed with this jaw-bone, he will bravely attack the Philistines of power.”

“You have been a good prophet,” affirmed the general; “I do not know how he will get on. But at present he is a personage; he has money, he gives the ton, he is strong.”

“And the duke, will I meet him at Madrid?”

“No, but you may see him, on your way, at Cordoval, where he is at this moment with his family.”

“The duke has finished by following my advice,” said the general; “he has abandoned public life. Everybody of slight importance ought to-day, like Achilles, to retire within their tents.”

“But, my uncle, is it then the fashion to retire?”

“They say that the duke,” interrupted the countess, “is entirely devoted to literature. He writes for the theatre.”

“I bet that the title of his first piece will be, ‘The goat returns always to the mountain,’” said Raphael, in the ear of his cousin, alluding to the loves of Maria and Pepe Vera, which everybody knew.

“Hold your tongue, Raphael,” said the countess, “we ought to act with our friends as the sons of Noah did with their father.”

“And Marisalada, has she mounted to the capitol in a chariot of gold, drawn by her fanatical admirers?”

“She has lost her voice, caused by a severe attack of pleurisy; did you not know that?”

“I was so far from knowing it that I bring her magnificent offers from Havana. What does she do?”

“Now, when she can no longer sing,” replied the general, “she will follow without doubt the counsels of the ant: she will learn to dance.”

“But where is she?” repeated Raphael, insisting; “I have a letter to deliver to her from her husband.”

“From her husband!” cried at once the marchioness, the countess, and the general.

“Have you seen him?” demanded the marchioness, with interest.

“He embarked in the same vessel with us for Havana. How he was changed! how sad he was! you would not have recognized him. A little time after our arrival he died of yellow fever.”

“He died! poor Stein!” said the countess.

“The death of this good man,” said the general, “will fall entirely on the conscience of this accursed singer.”

“I, who believe myself invulnerable,” replied Raphael, “and without ever having had the epidemic, I went to see him so soon as I learned he was ill. The attack was so violent that I found him almost at his last extremity; always calm, always filled with serene goodness, he thanked me for my visit, and said to me that he was happy in seeing, before he died, a loved face. He asked me for paper and a pen, and, almost dying, he traced some lines which he asked me, as the last request of a dying man, to convey to his wife. The vomiting soon followed, and he died with one hand clasped in those of the priest, the other in mine. I confide to you this letter, my dear Gracia; send it by a trusty man to Villamar, where, I suppose, Marisalada will have retired near to her father. Here is this letter, which I have often read, as one reads a holy hymn.”

The countess opened the paper, and read—

“Maria, thou whom I have loved, and who I love still; if my pardon can save you from remorse, if my benediction can render you happy, receive them both. I send them to you from my death-bed.

“Fritzen Stein.”