ve even a
dance. But we had dances at the Presidio; day and night the guitar
tinkled and the fiddles scraped; for what did we know of care, or old
age, or convents or death? I was many years younger than Rafaella and
did not go to the grand balls, but to the little dances, yes, many and
many. When the Russians came--it was in 1806--I saw them every day, and
one night danced with Rezanov himself. He was so gay--ay de mi! I
remember he swung me quite off my feet and made as if he would throw me
in the air. I was angry that he should treat me like a baby, and then he
begged me so humbly to forgive him, although his eyes laughed, that of
course I did. He had come down from Sitka to try and arrange for a
treaty with the Spanish government that the poor men in the employ of
the Russian-American Company might have breadstuffs to eat and not die
of scurvy, nor toil through the long winter with no flesh on their
bones. He brought a cargo with him to exchange for our corn and flour
meanwhile. We had never seen any one so handsome and so grand and he
turned all our heads, but he had a hard time with the Governor and Don
Jose--there are no such Californians now or the Americans would never
have got us--and it took all his diplomacy and all the help Concha and
the priests could give him before he got his way, for there was a law
against trading with foreigners. It was only when he and Concha became
engaged that Governor Arillaga gave in--how I pick up vulgar expressions
from these American pupils, I who should reform them! And did I not
stand Ellen O'Reilley in the corner yesterday for calling San Francisco
'Frisco'?--_San Francisco de Assisi!_ But all the saints have fled from
California.

"Where was I? Forgive an old woman's rambling, but I have not told
stories since Rafaella's children grew up, and that was many years ago.
What do I talk here? You know. And I that used to love to talk. Ay yi!
But no one can say that I am not a good nun. Bishop Alemany has said it
and no one knows better than he, the holy man. But for him I might be
sitting all day on a corridor in the south sunning myself like an old
crocodile, for we had no convent till he came eight years ago; and
perhaps but for Concha, whom I always imitated, I might have a dozen
brats of my own, for I was pretty and had my wooers and might have been
persuaded. And God knows, since I must have the care of children, I
prefer they should be mothered by some one else for then I