“I am ignorant,” replied Raphael. “All I know is, that the letter says, ‘I will feel under a thousand obligations if you will have the goodness, my friend, to introduce to the person I now present to you the most beautiful and the most amiable of your ladies, your most choice reunions, the most remarkable antiquities of ‘Seville, the beautiful,’ this ‘garden of Hesperides.’ ”
“The garden of Alcazar he should rather have said,” observed the marchioness.
“It is probable. When I saw myself charged with the accomplishment of this task, without knowing to which saint to address myself, I caught the luminous idea to address myself to my cousin, and to ask her permission to bring the prince to her soirée; because, in this way he can make the acquaintance of ladies the handsomest and most amiable, society the choicest, and,” he added, in a low voice, pointing to the tresillo table, “antiquities the most notable in Seville.”
“Take care, my mother is there,” murmured the countess, laughing secretly. “You are an insolent fellow. And,” she added, in a loud voice, “I will have much pleasure in seeing your protégé.”
“Good! very good!” exclaimed the general, striking the cards violently. “Take care of them, open to them wide the doors, place them all at their ease; they will accept all this pleasure at your house, and finish by mocking you.”
“Believe me, uncle,” replied Raphael, “that we have our revenge. It is true they pretend admirably. Some foreigners arrive among us with the single object of searching for adventures, persuaded that Spain is the classic land for this. Last year I had one of these monomaniacs in my care. He was an Irishman, related to Lord W.”
“Yes, as I to the Grand Turk,” said the general, sarcastically.
“The spirit of the hero of La Mancha,” continued Raphael, “took possession of my Irishman, whom I will call Green Erin, in default of his true name, which I have forgotten. An extraordinary affection for robbers had brought him to Spain. He wished to see them in all their strength. The pleasure of being robbed was his fixed idea, his caprice, the object of his travels. He would have given six thousand sacks of potatoes to see at his side Don José Maria, in his magnificent Andalusian costume, splendidly mounted, with buttons of doubloons. He brought, at all risk for José, a poignard, with handle of gold, and a pair of pistols.”
“To arm our enemies?” cried the general. “This is his great desire. Always the same.”
“He wished to go to Madrid,” continued Raphael; “but knowing that a diligence might have the bad taste to escort him, he decided to depart in the carriage of a courier. All my arguments to dissuade him were useless. He went, in fact; and a little beyond Cordova his ardent desires were realized: he encountered the robbers, but not the robbers of bon-ton—not fashionable robbers like Don José, who sparkles like a piece of gold, mounted on his fiery chestnut horse. They were little robbers, marching on foot, common and vulgar. You know what it is to be vulgar in England? There is no pestilence, no leprosy, which inspires so much horror in an Englishman as that which is vulgar. Vulgar! at this word Albion is covered with her densest fog; the dandies have spleen of the blackest dye; the ladies have the blue-devils; the misses have spasms; and dressmakers become nervous. Thus it is forbidden as if a lion approached. He did not fight, however, for his treasures, for these he had confided to me until his return. What he valued the most was a branch of willow from the tomb of Napoleon, the satin shoe of a danseuse, scarcely as big as a nut, and a collection of caricatures of his uncle, Lord W.”