more certain every day. The
suspicion of odd mystery that enveloped this girl intensified his
passion.

He sometimes asked her what her uncle was doing.

"He? Why, he has obtained, thanks to Monsieur Vaudrey, the decoration of
a hydropathic establishment, _Les Thermes des Batignolles_. He has
commenced the cartoon for a fresco: _Massage Moralizing the People_. We
shall see that in his studio."

"Do you know," Marianne continued, "what I would like to see?"

"What, then?"

"Spain, your own country. Where were you born, Rosas?"

"At Toledo. I own the family chateau there."

"With portraits and armor?"

"Yes, with portraits and armor."

"Well, I would like to go to Toledo, to see that chateau. It must be
magnificent."

"It is gloomy, simply gloomy. A fortress on a rock. Gray stone, a red
rock, scorched by the sun. Huge halls half Moorish in style. Walls as
thick as those of a prison. Steel knights, standing with lance in hand
as in _Eviradnus_! Old portraits of stern ancestors cramped in their
doublets, or Duchesses de Rosas, with pale faces, sad countenances,
buried in their collars whose _guipures_ have been limned by Velasquez
or Claude Coello. Immense cold rooms where the visitors' footfalls echo
as over empty tombs. A splendor that savors of the vault. You would die
of ennui at the end of two hours and of cold at the end of eight days."

"Die of cold in Spain?"

"There is a cold of the soul," the duke replied with a significant
smile. "That I have travelled so much, is probably due to my desire to
escape from that place! But you at Toledo, at Fuentecarral,--that is the
name of my castle,--a Parisian like you! It would be cruel. As well
shut up a humming-bird in a bear-pit. No! thank God, I have other nooks
in Spain that will shelter us, my dear sparrow of the boulevards! Under
the Andalusian jasmines, beneath the oleanders of Cordova or Seville,
under the fountains whose basins are decorated with azulejos, and in
which sultanas bathe, my jasmins could never sufficiently exhale their
perfume, my fountains could never murmur harmoniously enough to furnish
you a joyous welcome--when you go--if you go--But Toledo! My terrible
castle Fuentecarral! It is in vain that I am impenitently romantic, I
would not take you there for anything in the world. It would be as if
ice fell on your shoulders. Fuentecarral? Ugh!--that smacks of death."

While he spoke, Marianne looked at him with kindling eyes and in thought