To-morrow or the day after we shall leave Vichy. Miranda and I are to spend a few days in Paris before returning to Leon. (I am wild to be there to tell father the news; don’t tell him you, however; I want to give him a surprise.) Poor Pilar and her brother are going on to Spain, if the state of her health will admit of it, and she has not to stop at some place on the road—to die, perhaps. For I am not deceived by her apparent improvement; she is marked for death. What I regret most is to have to leave her two or three weeks before—But I am so happy that I don’t want to think of that. Offer up a prayer for me.
CHAPTER XIII.
The Gonzalvos were unable to go on to Spain, for midway on the journey Pilar was seized with symptoms so alarming, such sweats, swoons, fits of retching and exhaustion, that they thought her last hour was at hand, and that it would be fortunate if she reached Paris alive; in which case Doctor Duhamel was not without hope that a few days rest there would restore her strength sufficiently to allow of their proceeding on their way. Miranda, who had thought himself already rid of the dying girl, whom, although he did not nurse her himself, it annoyed him to see others nursing, accepted this change of program with ill-concealed discontent; Lucía, who could not reconcile herself to the idea of deserting her friend on the brink of the grave, as it were, with a lightening of the heart; and Perico, confident as he was that his sister would lack no attention, with the secret determination to see all there was to be seen in Paris. As for Pilar herself, possessed by the strange optimism characteristic of her malady, she manifested great delight at the prospect of visiting the capital of luxury and fashion, resolving to make her purchases for the winter there that she might be as good as “those affected Amézegas.”
They arrived in the great French capital on a dark and foggy morning and were at once assailed by innumerable runners from the hotels, each calling their attention to his omnibus and disputing their possession with his rivals. One of these runners, with a dark face crossed by a long scar, approached Miranda and said to him in good Spanish:
“Hotel de la Alavesa, Señor—Spanish spoken—Spanish waiters—olla served every day—Rue Saint-Honoré, the most central situation.”
“It would be well to go there,” said Duhamel, touching Miranda on the arm. “In a Spanish hotel a doente will receive better attention.”
“Let us go, then,” said Miranda resignedly, giving the check for his luggage to the runner. “Look here,” he added, addressing Perico, “you and I will go with the luggage in the hotel omnibus, and we will send Lucía and Pilar in one of those hackney-coaches—they do not jolt so much.”
They carried Pilar almost bodily from the railway carriage to the coach. The runner installed himself on the box after giving many charges and instructions to the postillion of the omnibus, and the driver whipped up his sorry-looking nag. After driving through several broad and magnificent streets they stopped in front of the Hotel de la Alavesa, and Lucía, springing lightly as a bird to the ground, said to the runner:
“Do me the favor to assist me in helping this young lady out of the carriage, she is ill.”
But suddenly recognizing the man’s face, she cried excitedly: