“Your handmaid; she brought him his supper.”
“Let her be called instantly.”
Here was new matter of confusion. The chamber of the demure damsel was likewise empty, her bed had not been slept in: she had doubtless gone off with the culprit, as she had appeared, for some days past, to have frequent conversations with him.
This was wounding the old governor in a tender part, but he had scarce time to wince at it, when new misfortunes broke upon his view. On going into his cabinet he found his strong box open, the leather purse of the trooper abstracted and with it a couple of corpulent bags of doubloons.
But how, and which way had the fugitives escaped? An old peasant who lived in a cottage by the road-side leading up into the Sierra, declared that he had heard the tramp of a powerful steed just before daybreak, passing up into the mountains. He had looked out at his casement, and could just distinguish a horseman, with a female seated before him.
“Search the stables!” cried Governor Manco. The stables were searched; all the horses were in their stalls, excepting the Arabian steed. In his place was a stout cudgel, tied to the manger, and on it a label bearing these words, “A gift to Governor Manco, from an Old Soldier.”
A FÊTE IN THE ALHAMBRA
THE Saint’s day of my neighbor and rival potentate, the count, took place during his sojourn in the Alhambra, on which occasion he gave a domestic fête; assembling round him the members of his family and household, while the stewards and old servants from his distant possessions came to pay him reverence and partake of the good cheer which was sure to be provided. It presented a type, though doubtless a faint one, of the establishment of a Spanish noble in the olden time.
The Spaniards were always grandiose in their notions of style. Huge palaces; lumbering equipages, laden with footmen and lackeys; pompous retinues, and useless dependents of all kinds; the dignity of a noble seemed commensurate with the legions who loitered about his halls, fed at his expense, and seemed ready to devour him alive. This, doubtless, originated in the necessity of keeping up hosts of armed retainers during the wars with the Moors; wars of inroads and surprises; when a noble was liable to be suddenly assailed in his castle by a foray of the enemy, or summoned to the field by his sovereign.
The custom remained after the wars were at an end; and what originated in necessity was kept up through ostentation. The wealth which flowed into the country from conquests and discoveries fostered the passion for princely establishments. According to magnificent old Spanish usage, in which pride and generosity bore equal parts, a superannuated servant was never turned off, but became a charge for the rest of his days; nay, his children, and his children’s children, and often their relatives to the right and left, became gradually entailed upon the family. Hence the huge palaces of the Spanish nobility, which have such an air of empty ostentation from the greatness of their size compared with the mediocrity and scantiness of their furniture, were absolutely required, in the golden days of Spain, by the patriarchal habits of their possessors. They were little better than vast barracks for their hereditary generations of hangers-on that battened at the expense of a Spanish noble.