ascara's company are
taken out and put to air. Well filled with food and drink, the
free-thinker Boutraix proposes that they shall equip themselves from
these with costumes not unsuitable to the knight, squire, and page of
the legend, and they do so, Bascara refusing to take part in the game,
and protesting strongly against their irreverence. At last midnight
comes, and they cry, "Where is Ines de las Sierras?" lifting their
glasses to her health. Suddenly there sounds from the dark end of the
great hall the fateful "Here am I!" and there comes forward a figure in
a white shroud, which seats itself in the vacant place assigned by
tradition to Ines herself. She is extraordinarily beautiful, and is,
under the white covering, dressed in a fashion resembling the mouldering
portrait which they have seen in the gallery. She speaks too, half
rallying them, as if surprised at _their_ surprise; she calls herself
Ines de las Sierras; she throws on the table a bracelet with the family
arms, which they have also seen dimly emblazoned or sculptured about the
castle; she eats; and, as a final piece of conviction, she tears her
dress open and shows the scar on her breast. Then she drinks response to
the toast they had in mockery proposed; she accepts graciously the
advances of the amorous Sergy; she sings divinely, and she dances more
divinely still. The whole scene is described supremely well, but the
description of the dance is one of the very earliest and very finest
pieces of Romantic French prose. One may try, however rashly, to
translate it:

(_She has found a set of castanets in her girdle._)

She rose and made a beginning by grave and measured steps,
displaying, with a mixture of grace and majesty, the
perfection of her figure and the nobility of her attitudes.
As she shifted her position and put herself in new aspects,
our admiration turned to amazement, as though another and
another beautiful woman had come within our view, so
constantly did she surpass herself in the inexhaustible
variety of her steps and her movements. First, in rapid
transition, we saw her pass from a serious dignity to
transports of pleasure, at first moderate, but growing more
and more animated; then to soft and voluptuous languors;
then to the delirium of joy, and then to some strange
ecstasy more delirious still. Next, she disappeared in the
far-off darkness of the huge hall