the palace, and so
to the porter's lodge by the great gate.

Here she was presently ushered out by a mumbling old woman who informed
her that her husband and son had both gone to Madrid with the troops,
but would undoubtedly return in an hour or two, a statement which with
her superior information the old gipsy took leave to doubt.

The town of San Ildefonso lay beneath the chateau, and to her right as
La Giralda issued from the gates. The houses were of an aspect at once
grave and cheerful. They had been built mostly, not for permanent
residence, but in order to accommodate the hordes of courtiers and their
suites who, in the summer months, followed the royal personages over the
mountains from Madrid.

As most of these had fled at the first invasion of the cholera, the
windows, at this period of the year generally bright with flowers and
shaded with emerald barred _jalousies_, were closely shut up, and upon
several of the closed doors appeared the fatal black and white notices
of the municipality, which indicated that there either was or had been a
case of the plague within the infected walls.

La Giralda went down the streets uttering the long wailing cry which
indicated that she had firewood to sell. But though she could have
disposed of the milk from the goats over and over again, there appeared
but little demand for her other commodity, even though she called,
"_Lena-a-a-a! Ah, lena-a-a-a!_" from one end of San Ildefonso to the
other.

A city watchman, with a pipe in his mouth, looked drowsily and frowsily
out of the town-hall or _ayuntamiento_. He was retreating again to his
settle when it suddenly struck him that this intruder had paid no duty
upon her milk and firewood. True, he was not the functionary appointed
by law to receive the tax; but since he was on the spot, and for lack of
other constituted the representative of civic state, he felt he must
undertake the duty.

So, laying aside his pipe and seizing his halberd and cocked hat, he
sallied grumblingly forth to intercept the bold contravener of municipal
laws. But the active limbs of the old gipsy, the lightened udders of the
she-goats, and the ass with his meek nose pointed homeward, took the
party out of the village gate before the man in authority could
over-take La Giralda.

Soon, therefore, the roofs of San Ildefonso and the white palace again
lay beneath her as the gipsy reascended by her track of the morning. So
long had she occupied in he