d moustaches black, lustrous, and profuse.
But for a sinister cast in his eyes, not always observable, his
countenance would have been pleasing enough. As it was he prided
himself upon it even now that he was well up in years, and his hair
becoming silvered. As for the moustaches, black pomatum kept them to
their original colour.

One thing soured him, even more than advancing age--his wooden leg.
'Tis said he could never contemplate that without an expression of pain
coming over his features, as though there was gout in the leg itself
giving him a twinge. And many the time--nay, hundreds of times--did he
curse Prince de Joinville. For it was in defending Vera Cruz against
the French, commanded by the latter, he had received the wound, which
rendered amputation of the limb necessary. In a way he ought to have
blessed the Prince, and been grateful for the losing of it rather than
otherwise. Afterwards the mishap stood him in good stead; at election
times when he was candidate for the Chief Magistracy of the State. Then
he was proud to parade the artificial limb; and did so to some purpose.
It was, indeed, an important element in his popularity, and more than
once proved an effective aid to his reinstatement. With a grim look,
however, he regarded it now. For though it had helped him politically,
he was not thinking of politics, and in what he was thinking about he
knew it an obstruction. A woman to love a man with a wooden leg! And
such a woman as Ysabel Almonte! Not that he put it to himself in that
way; far from it. He had still too good an opinion, if not of his
personal appearance, at least of his powers otherwise, and he even then
felt confident of success. For he had just succeeded in removing
another obstacle which seemed likely to be more in his way than the
wooden leg. He had but late come to know of it; but as soon as knowing,
had taken measures to avert the danger dreaded--by causing the
imprisonment of a man. For it was a man he feared, or suspected, as his
competitor for the affections of the Condesa. It had cost him no small
trouble to effect this individual's arrest, or rather capture. He was
one of the proscribed, and in hiding; though heard of now and then as
being at the head of a band of _salteadore_--believed to have turned
highwayman.

But he had been taken at length, and was at that moment in the gaol of
the Acordada; which Santa Anna well knew, having himself ordered his
incarce