“I do not want the plate—but tell me, did you not take the silk curtains too, and my lace, and the inlaid ink-stand and card case—oh! and those two vases, and the Sêvres jars, and the fan painted by Zamacois and the water-colour by Fortuny, and several other things?”
“You have a remarkably good memory,” said the marquesa, laughing to conceal her annoyance. “Yes, I took them away. Such treasures ought not to be left in danger of robbery. Do you know that Madrid is swarming with burglars?”
“Then bring me my watch,” said María turning over in bed, “I had better know the time to a minute.”
“Very well—but I remember it is gone to be mended. It did not go.”
“Then I must do without it; goodnight, mamma.”
“To-morrow at ten. I will be here in time to dress you. Goodnight, my darling.”
But María could not sleep. For the first time in her life she realised one of her earliest dreams of pious mortification; she had imagined the possibility of lying on a bed of brambles, so that her body being tormented to the great edification of the soul, she might the better emulate the penitent saints whose lives she had read with such enthusiasm. That night her bed was a bed of thorns, till it became a bed of burning coals, and seemed to scorch her limbs. She felt like St. Laurence on his gridiron, or St. John in his cauldron; she could generally get to sleep by repeating her prayers, but to-night they hung buzzing on her lips, like bees at the door of a hive, while her brain seemed on fire, writhing like some soul in the depths of hell, nipped and stung by Satan’s ministers. She could bear it no longer; in her ears was a continual hissing like frying; it bewildered her brain; her very eyes ached in the dark. She sprang out of bed and struck a light.
“Now,” she said to herself, as she slipped some clothes on. “Now, this minute!”