Let us go down-stairs," said Dona Perfecta, without paying any
attention to her daughter's swoon.

The two women glided down-stairs like two snakes. The maids and the
man-servant were in the hall, not knowing what to do. Dona Perfecta
passed through the dining-room into the garden, followed by Maria
Remedios.

"Fortunately we have Ca-Ca-Ca-balluco there," said the canon's niece.

"Where?"

"In the garden, also. He cli-cli-climbed over the wall."

Dona Perfecta explored the darkness with her wrathful eyes. Rage gave
them the singular power of seeing in the dark that is peculiar to the
feline race.

"I see a figure there," she said. "It is going towards the oleanders."

"It is he," cried Remedios. "But there comes Ramos--Ramos!" [Cristobal
Ramos, or "Cabulluco."]

The colossal figure of the Centaur was plainly distinguishable.

"Towards the oleanders, Ramos! Towards the oleanders!"

Dona Perfecta took a few steps forward. Her hoarse voice, vibrating
with a terrible accent, hissed forth these words:--

"Cristobal, Cristobal,--kill him!"

A shot was heard. Then another.

Translation of Mary J. Serrano.

A FAMILY OF OFFICE-HOLDERS

Don Francisco de Bringas y Caballero had a second-class
clerkship in one of the most ancient of the royal bureaus. He
belonged to a family which had held just such offices for time
out of mind. "Government employees were his parents and his
grandparents, and it is believed that his great-grandparents,
and even the ancestors of these, served in one way and another
in the administration of the two worlds." His wife Dona
Rosalia Pipaon was equally connected with the official class,
and particularly with that which had to do with the domestic
service of the royal abodes. Thus, "on producing her family
tree, this was found to show not so much glorious deeds of war
and statesmanship as those humbler doings belonging to a long
and intimate association with the royal person. Her mother had
been lady of the queen's wardrobe, her uncle a halberdier of
the royal guard, her grandfather keeper of the buttery, other
uncles at various removes, equerries, pages, dispatch-bearers,
huntsmen, and managers of the royal farm at Aranjuez, and so
forth and so on.... For this dame there existed two things
wholly Divine; namely, heaven and that almost equally
desirable dwelling