ared up
the wide staircase, Don Balthasar, who had stood perfectly motionless
with his old face over his snuff-box, seemed to wake up, and made in the
air a hasty sign of the cross after his daughter.

They appeared again in the upper gallery between the columns. I saw
her head, draped in lace, carried proudly, with the white flower in her
hair. I raised my eyes. All my being seemed to strive upwards in that
glance. Had she turned her face my way just a little? Illusion! And
the double door above closed with an echoing sound along the empty
galleries. She had disappeared.

Don Balthasar took three turns in the courtyard, no more. It was
evidently a daily custom. When he withdrew his hand from my arm to tap
his snuff-box, we stood still till he was ready to slip it in again.
This was the strangest part of it, the most touching, the most
startling--that he should lean like this on me, as if he had done it for
years. Before me there must have been somebody else. Carlos? Carlos, no
doubt. And in this placing me in that position there was apparent the
work of death, the work of life, of time, the pathetic realization of an
inevitable destiny. He talked a little disjointedly, with the uncertain
swaying of a shadow on his thoughts, as if the light of his mind had
flickered like an expiring lamp. I remember that once he asked me, in a
sort of senile worry, whether I had ever heard of an Irish king called
Brian Boru; but he did not seem to attach any importance to my reply,
and spoke no more till he said good-night at the door of my chamber.

He went on to his apartment, surrounded by lights and preceded by his
major-domo, who walked as bowed with age as himself; but the African had
a firmer step.

I watched him go; there was about his progress in state something
ghostlike and royal, an old-time, decayed majesty. It was as if he had
arisen before me after a hundred years' sleep in his retreat--that man
who, in his wild and passionate youth, had endangered the wealth of the
Riegos, had been the idol of the Madrid populace, and a source of dismay
to his family. He had carried away, _vi et armis_, a nun from a convent,
incurring the enmity of the Church and the displeasure of his sovereign.
He had sacrificed all his fortune in Europe to the service of his king,
had fought against the French, had a price put upon his head by a
special proclamation. He had known passion, power, war, exile, and love.
He had been thanked by his ret