, having
carefully locked the doors, accompanied me to his palace. He took me
into a Gothic chamber, furnished with worn French furniture, the walls
covered with cheap paper. Offering me a cigarette, he opened a drawer
and produced a faded manuscript.

'This is the document in question,' he said. 'Those crooked and
fantastic characters are terrible. I often wonder if the writers were
able to read them.'

'You are fortunate to be the possessor of such things,' I remarked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

'What good are they? I would sooner have fifty pesetas than this musty
parchment.'

An offer! I quickly reckoned it out into English money. He would
doubtless have taken less, but I felt a certain delicacy in bargaining
with a duke over his family secrets....

'Do you mean it? May I--er--'

He sprang towards me.

'Take it, my dear sir, take it. Shall I give you a receipt?'

And so, for thirty-one shillings and threepence, I obtained the only
authentic account of how the frailty of the illustrious Senora Dona
Sodina was indirectly the means of raising her husband to the highest
dignities in Spain.

III

Don Sebastian and his wife had lived together for fifteen years, with
the entirest happiness to themselves and the greatest admiration of
their neighbours. People said that such an example of conjugal felicity
was not often seen in those degenerate days, for even then they prated
of the golden age of their grandfathers, lamenting their own
decadence.... As behoved good Castilians, burdened with such a line of
noble ancestors, the fortunate couple conducted themselves with all
imaginable gravity. No strange eye was permitted to witness a caress
between the lord and his lady, or to hear an expression of endearment;
but everyone could see the devotion of Don Sebastian, the look of
adoration which filled his eyes when he gazed upon his wife. And people
said that Dona Sodina was worthy of all his affection. They said that
her virtue was only matched by her piety, and her piety was patent to
the whole world, for every day she went to the cathedral at Xiormonez
and remained long immersed in her devotions. Her charity was exemplary,
and no beggar ever applied to her in vain.

But even if Don Sebastian and his wife had not possessed these conjugal
virtues, they would have been in Xiormonez persons of note, since not
only did they belong to an old and respected family, which was rich as
well, but the gentleman's broth