Upon the sofa reclined a woman of extraordinary beauty. One alabaster hand, hidden in a mass of auburn curls, supported her head upon the pillow of the sofa. A loose cambric dress, adorned with Flanders lace, robed her youthful and perfect form. Through the lace of her robe just peeped the point of a little foot encased in a silken stocking and white satin slipper. At that time no other shoe was used by ladies of distinction upon any occasion, and luxury reached even to the wearing of lace slippers lined with colored satin.
The apostles of the last foreign fashion, admirers of the buskin, regard with sovereign contempt this rich and elegant custom, which, in their eyes, is guilty of two mortal sins—that of being old-fashioned, and that of being Spanish. The lady's left hand was adorned with a splendid brilliant, and held a cambric handkerchief of Mexican embroidery, with which, from time to time, she dried a tear that slid slowly down her pearly cheek.
The reader thinks that he divines the cause of this solitary tear shed by a woman, young, beautiful, and surrounded by the evidences of a luxurious and enviable position. He has decided that it must be the token of wounded affection, and has guessed wrong. Respect for truth, even at the sacrifice of admiration for the heroine of our story, obliges us to confess that this tear was not of love, but of spite. Yes, that brilliant drop, falling from eyes as blue as the sky of evening, gliding between those long, dark lashes, and across those delicately glowing cheeks, was the evidence of spite.
But before we proceed it is necessary to explain the cause of the ill-humor of our heroine.
Chapter II.
The young lady we have been describing was called Ismena, and was the only child of Don Iago O'Donnell, whose family, in common with many others, had emigrated from Ireland in the time of William of Orange. After the capitulation of Limerick, the troops, who belonged to the most noble families of Ireland, entered the service of France and Spain. Philip the First, as was to have been expected, welcomed them, and they formed, in 1709, the regiments of Ibernia and Ultonia, and, later, a third called the Irlanda. These troops were commanded by James Stuart, duke of Berwick, natural son of James the Second by Arabella Churchill, sister of the famous Duke of Marlborough. The Duke of Berwick gained the battle of Almansa and took Barcelona by assault, and the king rewarded his great services with the dukedoms of Liria and Jerica, and made him a grandee of Spain. This gallant general had two sons, the elder was naturalized in Spain and inherited the titles of Berwick, Liria, and Jerica, to which he afterward united, by his marriage, that of the noble house of Alba, which had descended to a female. The second son established himself in France, where his descendants still exist and bear the title of dukes of Fitz-James.
The above-mentioned regiments are represented in our days by the descendants of the loyal men who composed them, for, as we have been informed, there are now ninety Irish surnames in the Spanish army, names which, for their traditional loyalty and bravery, and their hereditary nobility, honor those who bear them.
Don Iago O'Donnell married a Spanish lady, and his daughter, Ismena, united in her person the beauty of both types. Her slight and graceful Andalusian form was clothed in the white rose-tinted skin of the daughters of misty Erin, to which the impassible coldness of its possessor gave a transparent pearliness and purity that nothing ever disturbed. Her large violet eyes beamed from beneath their dark lashes with the haughty and expressive glance of the south. Her carriage, though somewhat lofty, was free and natural. Naturalness is, indeed, but another name for that "Spanish grace" which has been so justly famed and eulogized. The irresistible attraction which is born of it, and which, in former times, women shed around them as the flame sheds light and the flowers perfume, they owed to the men, who used to abhor whatever was put on, affected, or studied; anathematizing it in a masculine way under the expressive epithet "monadas." [Footnote 50] In naturalness there is truth, and without truth there is no perfection; in naturalness there is grace, and without grace there is no real elegance. Taste at present appears to lie in the opposite extreme, as if the Florentines should dress their Venus di Medicis as a show figure.
[Footnote 50: Monkey airs, splashness.]