Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

"Bueno!" he cried at last, whisking the mirthful tears from his eyes. "Vamos á ver! Let us go on and see!"

We opened the classic volume at the Catholic Faust-drama, El Mágico Prodigioso, and began to read, soon passing into the great argument between Cipriano and Lucifer as to the nature of God. Our guest, sensitive to all impressions as he was, became immediately amazed and delighted.

"But this is lofty!" he exclaimed. "This is sublime! Good, Cipriano, good! Now you have him! What will the devil say to that? Vamos á ver!"

At the close of that tremendous scene he shut the book, fairly panting with excitement. But nevertheless there was a twinkle in his eye. He knew now why I craved this Calderon. He was evidently a religious writer, and women were all religious. It was an amiable feminine weakness, like the aversion to geography and arithmetic. But his indulgent chivalry rose to the occasion. Having learned my taste, such as it was, he would gratify it to the utmost.

"If you would only come and see my library!" he proposed. "I have exactly the book there that will please you. I have not read it myself, but it is very large, with most beautiful pictures, and it tells these old stories about Lucifer and all that. I am sure it is just what you would like. Will you not do your humble servant the honor of coming to-morrow afternoon?"

I ran over in my mind our engagements for the morrow. He mistook the cause of my hesitation.

"Indeed you need not be afraid to come," he urged. "My house is as safe as a convent. That old wife of mine, too, will be sure to be somewhere about. And you can bring the silent señorita with you."

I was aware of a slight convulsion in "the silent señorita." She could speak all the Spanish she chose, but she found the eccentricities of this visitor so disconcerting that she affected ignorance, and he supposed her mute presence at our interviews to be purely in deference to the Spanish proprieties.

My youthful chaperon, much elated by this reversal of our natural positions, duly attended me the next day to our friend's surprisingly elegant home. He was forever crying poverty and telling us, with the tears that came to his old age as easily as the laughter, how the hardships of life had beaten out of him every ambition save hope to "gain the bread" until his death, but we found him luxuriously housed, and I was afterward informed that he was one of the richest men in the city.

He ran with that wonderful sprightliness of his across the marbled court to meet us, and ceremoniously conducted us up the handsome staircase. He led us through all "our house," typically Andalusian, with statues and urns of blossoming trees set in the open patios, with Moorish arches and bright-hued tiles, shaded balconies, tapestried and curtained beds, braseros, and rocking-chairs, and in every room images and paintings of the saints, at which he made irreverent grimaces.