"There were laws that were only made to break,
In a world that never seems half awake
Till the lamps were lit—there were souls at stake.
Far away in Bohemia."
DOLF WYLLARDE.
Barcelona in August was like the Hell to which Emile likened it.
The rich escaped from the heat to their villas up in the mountains, those whom business, or lack of money, kept in the city, existed in a parched and sweltering condition. Arithelli still kept her place among the performers at the Hippodrome, though after the fashion of circus artists her name had been changed.
She was now "Madame Mignonne" from Paris, and wore a golden wig, and came on the stage riding a lion in the character of a heathen goddess in the spectacular display which always ended the performance.
She pined for the haute école and trick riding in which she so excelled, and felt unholy pangs when she saw her beloved white horses being driven in a chariot by a fat, vulgar English woman, arrayed in scanty pink tunic and tights.
She was not afraid of the lion, who was old and toothless enough to be absolutely safe, but her new role was not a great success.
The golden hair did not suit her any better than did the classical draperies, and she grew daily thinner. As a matter of fact she was practically going through the process of slow starvation.
She had never, even in her healthily hungry days, been able to eat the abominable Spanish dishes—meat floating in oil, and other things which she classed together under the heading of cochonneries.
She generally lived on fruit, a little black bread, coffee, and absinthe.
Emile would try and bully her into eating more, and occasionally essayed his talents as a chef, and cooked weird looking things in his rooms over a vilely smelling English oil stove, but the Jewess in Arithelli found him wanting in the "divers washings" she required of the saucepans, and they generally ended these Bohemian repasts with a quarrel.