the covetous, domains. Nothing is left undone that can determine the wavering and secure the doubtful. “The ultimate success of the pretender of Trastamare,” he says, “is an event utterly improbable; and even should he come, it would only be to enrich his own followers by a fearful reckoning among those who have opposed him.”
Subtle arguments these, and admirably suited to the temper of the times, when men’s minds were swayed either by venal and selfish motives, or by the terror of ruin and massacre.
Don Juan lives in a narrow street, a stone’s throw from the gate of the Alcazar. His house still remains, a curious monument of the times; a small, low building with a quaint projecting attic and casements guarded by rows of low Saracenic arches.
Of course there is a fountain in the small pillared patio where he received his friends. If it is the same little pillar of spray as in Don Juan’s time hummed and splashed through the long summer days, I cannot say, or if he was served by the identical Leporello we know so well, and scolded by the shrewish wife Doña Elvira, who always sings in “alt.” But it is certain that the low door of his house gave access nightly to crowds of rollicking guests and fair masked señoras, and that the king in disguise often stepped across the street from the Alcazar to take part in the revelry.