“They accompanied the Marquis on his trips. Have you seen the coach? What a beauty it is! It will hold twenty-four persons. It’s dirty and broken now, and isn’t a bit showy; but you should have seen it in those days. It used to take eight horses and postillions a la Federica to haul it. And what a to-do when they gave the order to start! The guards, mounted on horseback, waited for the coach in that little plazoleta in front. Then the cavalcade started off. And what horses! He always had two or three of those animals that cost thousands of dollars.”
“It must have cost him a lot to maintain a stable like that.”
“Just think of it!”
“When did these grandeurs come to an end?”
“Not very long ago, believe me. When the Queen came to Cordova, she rode from the Cueva del Cojo to the city in our coach.”
“How is it that the family could fall so far?”
“It has been everybody’s fault. God never granted much sense to the members of this household; but the administrator and the Count, who is the young ladies’ father, were the ones who brought on most of the ruin. The latter, besides being a libertine and a spendthrift, is a fool. People are always deceiving him; and what he doesn’t lose through foolishness, he does through distrust. Once he bought twenty thousand gallons of oil in Malaga at seventy reales, brought them here, and sold them in a few days, at forty.”
“That certainly was an idiotic thing to do.”
“Well, he’s done lots more like it.”
“What has become of him now? Where does he live?”