CHAPTER XX.
AN IDOL ON ITS PEDESTAL.
In the spacious garden attached to the governor's house were gathered together some of the gayest and most fashionable of those who moved in the higher circles of Seville. A party had been invited to celebrate with dance, song, and feasting, the birthday of the governor's only daughter. The garden was a little paradise, in which nature and art seemed to outvie each other in offering attractions to eye, ear, and taste. Lopez, who, with his daughter, had visited the Great Exhibition in Paris, had brought back ideas of French magnificence to add new adornments to a place which, for beauty and elegance, had before been unrivalled in Seville. Exotics from various countries blended with the splendid plants indigenous to Andalusia, making the parterres one flush of brilliant hues. Italian statues adorned gilded fountains that threw up scented waters to sparkle in the sun. Here, under the shade of orange-trees, ladies listened to the strains of some manly voice, accompanied by the tinkling guitar. There the fandango was danced on the velvet turf, while clattering castanets kept time. Servants in gorgeous liveries carried about ices shaped into the forms of fruits, or costly luxuries brought from the most distant parts of the world. Others followed with wines such as were to be found in no cellars in Seville save those of the wealthy governor, who was as lavish in expending his money as he was unscrupulous in acquiring it.
The centre of the brilliant circle, the observed of all observers, the magnet which drew to itself the admiration of every cavalier present—Donna Antonia stood like the queen of beauty, surrounded by satellites that only shone in the light of her smile. Antonia concentrated in herself the charms for which the women of Andalusia are famed. Hers were the lustrous almond-shaped eyes, the luxuriant hair, the exquisite form whose every movement is the perfection of grace. Perhaps to the eye of an artist Antonia would have appeared more to advantage in the picturesque long white robe and lace veil of the Spanish costume, than in the dress of the newest Parisian fashion with which she had chosen to replace them. But let her wear what she might, Antonia in any garb must have been acknowledged to be the most beautiful woman in Seville; and no one was more aware of the fact than herself. No expense had been spared in showing off her beauty; the arms and neck of the governor's daughter were loaded with splendid jewels, and a circlet of brilliants sparkled round her brow.
It was to be expected that such a subject of interest as the arrest of Don Alcala de Aguilera should afford a topic for gossip amongst members of fashionable circles, as well as amongst the poorer inhabitants of Seville. Even the cavalier's late adventure in the bull-ring had scarcely been a more exciting, and therefore delightful, theme. There was not a group in the gay garden of Lopez de Rivadeo where Alcala's imprisonment did not form a thread in the web of light converse, a thread variously coloured, according to the temper of the speakers, by disapproval, contempt, or pity. The appearance, at least, of the noble hidalgo was familiar to all the guests of Antonia, and every one, more or less, took some interest in his fate.
"I always declared my conviction that De Aguilera would sink lower and lower after he degraded himself by stooping to serve an English mechanic," observed a stiff-backed don, who had himself not been above begging a place in the customs and enforcing his plea by a bribe.
"I'd have blown out my brains before I'd have done that!" exclaimed a young Spanish officer, twirling the end of his slender mustache.
"De Aguilera took almost as short a method of cutting the life-knot when he rode spear in hand into the Plaza de Toros," observed a stately duenna.
"I admired his daring," lisped her pretty young charge. "One likes to see the knightly spirit flash forth; and if Don Alcala had been slain in the arena, one could only have said that it was a pity that so brave and handsome a caballero should come to such an untimely end. But only think of a Spanish hidalgo being carried off to a common prison on such a charge as might be preferred against some book-hawking pedlar!"