gry red color, amid the florid
hue of the countenance.

The expression of these benign features did not disgrace their symmetry.
It was a cross between a scowl and a sneer; the eyes and brow performed
the former, the mouth assuming the latter function.

Blushing with shame and trembling with emotion, Maria led me towards
him, and, in accents I can never forget, told how I had rescued her in
the passage of the Crocodile River. The wretch scowled more darkly
than before, as he listened, and when she ended, he muttered something
between his bloated lips that sounded marvellously like "Picaro!"

"Your godfather scarcely seems so grateful as one might expect,
Senhora," said I.

"Muerte de Dios!" he burst out, "I am her husband."

Whether it was the simple fact so palpably brought forward, the manner
of its announcement, or the terrible curse that involuntarily fell from
my lips, I know not, but Donna Maria fell down in a swoon. Fainting,
among foreigners, I have often found, is regarded next door to actually
dying; and so it was here. A scene of terror and dismay burst forth that
soon converted the festivity into an uproar of wild confusion. Every one
screamed for aid, and dashed water in his neighbor's face. The few who
retained any presence of mind filled out large bumpers of wine, and
drank them off. Meanwhile, Donna Maria was sufficiently recovered to be
conducted into the house, whither she was followed by her "marido," Don
Lopez, whose last look as he passed me was one of insulting defiance.

The cause of order having triumphed, as the newspapers say, I was led to
one side by Don Estaban, who in a few words told me that Don Lopez was
a special envoy from the Court of Madrid, come out to arrange some
disputed question of a debt between the two countries; that he was a
Grandee d'Espana, a Golden Fleece, and I don't know what besides; his
title of Donna Maria's husband being more than enough to swallow up
every other consideration with me. The ceremony had been performed
that very morning. It was the wedding breakfast I had thrown into such
confusion and dismay.

Don Estaban, in his triumphal narrative of his daughter's great
elevation in rank, of the proud place she would occupy in the proud
court of the Escurial, her wealth, her splendor, and her dignity, could
not repress the fatherly sorrow he felt at such a disproportioned union;
nor could he say anything of his son-in-law but what concerned his
immense fortu