ion was everything that
genial hospitality could dictate. One of the drawing-rooms had been
already converted into a kind of barrack-room, with half-a-dozen beds in
it; and now the library was to be devoted to the Prince, while a small
octagon tower leading off it, about the size and shape of a tea-tray,
was reserved for me. If these arrangements were attended with
inconvenience, certainly nothing in the manner of either host or hostess
showed it. They and their numerous family of sons and daughters seemed
to take it as the most natural thing in life to be thrown into disorder
to accommodate their friends; not alone their friends, but their
friends' friends: for so proved more than half of the present company.
Several of "the boys," meaning the sons of the host, slept at houses
in the neighborhood; we actually bivouacked in a little temple in
the garden. There seemed no limit to the contrivances of our kind
entertainers, either in the variety of the plans for pleasure, or the
hearty good-nature with which they concurred in any suggestion of the
guests. All that Spanish politeness expresses, as a phrase, was here
reduced to actual practice. Everything was at the disposal of the
stranger. Not alone was he at liberty to ride, drive, fish, shoot, hunt,
boat, or course at will, but all his hours were at his own disposal,
and his liberty unfettered, even as to whether he dined in his own
apartment, or joined the general company. Nothing that the most
courteous attention could provide was omitted, at the same time that the
most ample freedom was secured to all. Here, too, was found a tone of
cultivation that would have graced the most polished society of any
European capital. Foreign languages were well understood and spoken;
music practised in its higher walks; drawing cultivated with a skill
rarely seen out of the hands of professed masters; subjects of politics
and general literature were discussed with a knowledge and a liberality
that bespoke the highest degree of enlightenment; while to all these
gifts the general warmth of native character lent an indescribable charm
of kindliness and cordiality that left none a stranger who spent even
twelve hours beneath their roof.

The Prince was in ecstasies with everything and every one, and he
himself no less a favorite with all. Every fall he got in hunting made
him more popular; every misadventure that occurred to him, in trying to
conform to native tastes, gave a new grace and