At this moment there issued from the door of the Mission Don Antonio Velez Trueba, a Gachupin—that is, a native of Old Spain—a wizened old hidalgo refugee, who had left the mother country on account of his political opinions, which were stanchly Carlist, and had found his way—how, he himself scarcely knew—from Mexico to San Francisco in Upper California, where, having a most perfect contempt for every thing Mexican, and hearing that in the Mission of San Fernando, far away, were a couple of Spanish padres of “sangre regular,” he had started into the wilderness to ferret them out; and having escaped all dangers on the route (which, however, were hardly dangers to the Don, who could not realise the idea of scalp-taking savages), had arrived with a whole skin at the Mission. There he was received with open arms by his countryman Fray Augustin, who made him welcome to all the place afforded, and there he harmlessly smoked away his time; his heart far away on the banks of the Genil and in the grape-bearing vegas of his beloved Andalusia, his withered cuerpo in the sierras of Upper California. Don Antonio was the walking essence of a Spaniard of the ancien régime. His family dated from the Flood, and with the exception of sundry refreshing jets of Moorish blood, injected into the Truebas during the Moorish epoch, no strange shoot was ever engrafted on their genealogical tree. The marriages of the family were ever confined to the family itself—never looking to fresh blood in a station immediately below it, which was not hidalgueño; nor above, since any thing higher in rank than the Trueba y Trueba family, no habia, there was not.
Thus, in the male and female scions of the house, were plainly visible the ill effects of breeding “in and in.” The male Truebas were sadly degenerate Dons, in body as in mind—compared to their ancestors of Boabdil's day; and the señoritas of the name were all eyes, and eyes alone, and hardly of such stamp as would have tempted that amorous monarch to bestow a kingdom for a kiss, as ancient ballads tell.
“Dueña de la negra toca,
Por un beso de tu boca,
Diera un reyno, Boabdil;
Y yo por ello, Cristiana,
Te diera de buena gana
Mil cielos, si fueran mil.”
Come of such poor stock, and reared on tobacco smoke and “gazpacho,” Don Antonio would not have shone, even amongst pigmy Mexicans, for physical beauty. Five feet high, a framework of bones covered with a skin of Andalusian tint, the Trueba stood erect and stiff in all the consciousness of his “sangre regular.” His features were handsome, but entirely devoid of flesh, his upper lip was covered with a jet-black mustache mixed with gray, his chin was bearded “like the pard.” Every one around him clad in deer and goat skin, our Don walked conspicuous in shining suit of black—much the worse for wear, it must be confessed—with beaver hat sadly battered, and round his body and over his shoulder an unexceptionable “capa” of the amplest dimensions. Asking, as he stepped over him, the pardon of an Indian urchin who blocked the door, and bowing with punctilious politeness to the sturdy mozas who were grinding corn, Don Antonio approached our friend Augustin, who was discussing warlike matters with his administrador.
“Hola! Don Antonio, how do you find yourself, sir?”