The spirit of Ismena was far less richly endowed than her person. She possessed the cold, calm temperament of her father united to the haughty and domineering disposition she had inherited from her mother, and these qualities were exaggerated in her by the overbearing pride of the rich, beautiful, and spoiled child. Her mind was ever occupied in framing for herself a future as illustrious and brilliant as those which fortune-tellers prognosticate, and so she rejected all the lovers who offered her their affections, not one of them appearing likely to realize her dreams of greatness. But changes of fortune, like the transformations in magic comedies, come unlooked for and suddenly. Ismena's father lost his whole fortune within a few months; thanks to the treachery of the English, who seized so many of our ships and so much treasure before making a formal declaration of war with Spain. The fatal war which brought upon us the fatal family compact! Don Iago, who had just lost his wife, retired, ruined, to his country house in Chiclana. But this retreat did not long remain to him, for the house was advertised for sale by his creditors. The first person who presented himself as a purchaser was the General Count of Alcira. General Alcira had just returned from a long residence in America. Though he counted but fifty-five years, he appeared much older in consequence of the destructive action of that climate, which, with its hot miasms, impairs the European even as it corrodes iron. Notwithstanding his age, the general had become the heir of a young nephew, from whose title the rule of succession excluded females. On his return he went to Seville, his native city, where he was received by his sister-in-law (who looked upon him as one come to deprive her and her daughters of the riches and title they had possessed) with such bitterness and hostility that, although he was one of the most generous of men, he was justly indignant, and determined to leave Seville and establish himself in Cadiz, and he decided well.
At that period, Seville, the staid, religious matron, with rosary in hand, still more the buckram stays and the high powdered promontory—that, without the hair, must have been a weight in itself—and the hoops with which a lady could pass with ease only through a very wide door. At her austere entertainments she played Baciga or Ombre with her canons, her judges, her aldermen; and her cavaliers. She had no theatre, being withheld therefrom by a religious vow. She had for illumination only the pious lights that burned before her numerous pictures of saints. She had no pavements, no Paseo de Cristiana.
Of course there were no steamboats, those swift news-bearers which have since united in such close friendship these sister cities, the twin jewels of Andalusia, Cadiz, even more beautiful than she is now, wore her drapery in the low-necked Greek fashion which we still see in portraits of the beauties of those days. Cadiz, the seductive siren of naked bosom and silver scales, bathed in a sea of water, a sea of pleasure, and a sea of riches. She knew well how to unite the art and culture of foreign elegance with the dignity, ease, and spontaneity of Spanish grace, and, though the fair Andalusian had adopted certain things and forms that were foreign, she was none the less essentially Spanish in her delicate taste and circumspection, and her attachment to her own nationality.
For, strange to tell, in those days the pompous and high-sounding assumption of the "Spanish" which now fills the unholy sheets of the public press, and resounds through all discourses like hollow and incessant thunders, was unknown. It did not blare in lyric compositions, nor was it made the instrument of a party for the promotion of such or such ideas, nor was the bull Señorito [Footnote 51] chosen with enthusiasm as its symbol.
[Footnote 51: The famous bull that, in 1850, in Seville, fought and killed a large tiger.]
But that which was Spanish was had with simplicity, as the brave man has his intrepidity without proclaiming it, and as the fields have their flowers without parading them, Spanish patriotism was not upon the lips, but in the blood, in the being; it was the genius of the people; and it became them so well, was so refined and generous, so gentle and chivalric, so in harmony with the gracious southern type, that it came to be the admiration and delight of strangers. But we have apostatized from it, do not understand it, hold it in slight esteem, and, unlike the ass that covered himself with the rich golden skin of the lion, we, more stupid than he, instead of smoothing and cultivating that which nature has bestowed upon us, wrap ourselves in one that is inferior to it. Then the most candid gayety blended with an exquisite refinement pervaded social intercourse. There were neither clubs nor casinos, only reunions, in which gallantry was governed by the code contained in these ancient verses of Suarez:
"You are feared and worshiped;
You to be obeyed:
We saw humble worshipers,
Of your frowns afraid.
You the lovely conquerors;
We your bondsman true:
Ladies dear in vanquishers,
We are slaves to you.
You the praised and honored;
Fairest under sun:
We the lowly servitors,
By your smiles undone."
The expression "to acquire a manner" was not then in use, but the practice of good manners was a matter of course and of instinct. The officers of the marine, brave and gentlemanly as they are now, but richer and more gallant, constituted the chief ornament of the society of Cadiz. They had formed themselves into a gay fraternity, at the head of which were the officers of the man-of-war San Francisco de Paula, and which, in playful allusion to the motto of the saint of this name—Caritas bonitas—styled itself "La devota Hermandad de las Caritas Bonitas" [Footnote 52] (The devoted Brotherhood of Beauty). In the theatre the national pieces of our own poets were played, and the farces of Don Ramon de la Cruz were enthusiastically applauded: at the brilliant fairs of Chiclana the inhabitants of Cadiz and Puerto congregated like flocks of gorgeous birds; and Cadiz retained, long years after, charms sufficient to inspire the song of Byron, that discriminating appreciator of the beautiful.
[Footnote 52: Caritas bonitas, Pretty faces.]
The General Count of Alcira desiring to buy a country house, that of Don Iago O'Donnell was proposed to him, and be went to look at it. The unfortunate proprietor threw it open to his inspection as soon as he presented himself. The count was charmed with all that he saw in the elegant mansion we have already described, and, above all, with the daughter of its master, whom they encountered writing in a retired cabinet that received light and fragrance from the garden. She was dressed in deep mourning, and weeping bitterly while she answered letters from two of her friends who had just married—one an English lord, and the other a nobleman of Madrid. How bitterly those letters caused Ismena to feel the contrast between the lot of her friends and that which compelled her, single and poor, to abandon even this house, the only thing that remained to her of the brilliant past.