"Come then, and I will give Pedro some money to buy drinks for the stupid dolts,—they can drink my health: it is none of the best these days, Robledo. My American trip was wearing. It is a wretched, unromantic hole—not a country, just a great mob of people."
"I can well believe your Excellency. This way, sir."
They returned to the big room of the tavern, and Dolores retired from the temporary confessional box. Her face showed mixed emotions—but predominating over any other influence was the great desire to serve the rulers of her family. Curiously loyal are these humble peasants of the inland Latin districts. Their lives follow the monotonous example of the generations before them: as their grandsires, their fathers were tradesmen of a certain calling, so do they follow the strata, contented to exist with the conventional beginning, moderately happy middle era, and inevitably stupid ending of their lives.
It is this which is so pleasing to the European aristocrats: no matter how bankrupt, incompetent, disreputable, the class theory which is recognized by the masses is, "Once a gentleman, always a gentleman."
It is inconceivable upon the Continent for a peasant's or even a tradesman's son or daughter to aspire to a higher level than that of the family. Exceptions to the rule are looked upon with distrust by superiors as well as the lowly equals: too much ambition is a temptation to the gods which is hardly respectable.
There is a smug contentment, then, in the feudal countries which is the surest bulwark of the "divine right of kings"—and courtiers! A pleasantly distended belly, a mellow thrill from cheap wine, a certainty about the repetition of regular meals and drinks, with enough clothes and shelter to maintain relative positions with the neighbors—this year, next year, and twenty years from now ... these things are the mess of pottage for which the Esaus of the kingdoms and principalities sell their birthrights and their souls!
Vardos—for instance—bodyservant and sole military retainer of a princely line which for generation after generation had considered itself in humiliating straits unless there were at least a thousand lances at beck and call—old Vardos had been thrown into a mental maelstrom by the sudden change in the lifelong existence. Sure of his meals and a modicum of money for occasional visits to taprooms, he was now placed in a position of responsibility, one where executive and aggressiveness were demanded. Here old Vardos failed, because he was a peasant true to his type. The poor fellow had struggled with his grief these fifteen days—now he felt, with a helpless aching of the faithful heart, that he must have been in a sense responsible for the death of his master. He had pleaded with the young Prince not to enter the accursed place.
Insanity and suicide though it seemed to be to him, he could not help it. That was bad enough—but with the prospect of the beautiful Princess going into the place as well: life had become a horrible thing to him.
He sought the wayside shrine down the crooked village street. He threw himself upon his knees before it, vowing candles to every saint who had granted petty favors to him in the past!
He faced the great cathedral, rearing its pale crest in the dim light from the stars, vast and exalted above the miserable squalor of those whose ancestors had created its grandeur with their inspired devotion. He told the Holy Family and the saints, with tear-choked voice, the quandary of his noble master, and begged that, though they should never grant him another request, somehow, somewhere, they find and bring a gallant adventurer who could turn defeat into victory, one more willing and competent than himself, to die!