egular and agreeable features denoted a passionate
nature and lofty character. Like most of his countrymen, he was quickly
roused, but easy to appease. Generosity and forbearance were prominent
amongst his good qualities; and he had nobly displayed them in more than
one encounter with antagonists, whose feebleness placed them at his
mercy, and rendered them unworthy of his wrath. For in the use of arms,
as in all manly exercises, Federico was an adept; and whether with
Toledo blade, or _Majo's_ knife, there were few men in Spain who would
not have found in him a formidable and dangerous adversary.

Strange to tell of so young a man, and of a Spaniard, in one respect our
student appeared passionless. He met the advances of his female admirers
with the utmost coldness--seemed, indeed, to avoid the society of the
fair sex, threw love-letters into the fire, unread and unanswered,
neglected invitations, went to no rendezvous. Favours which other men
would gladly have purchased with years of life, he disdainfully
rejected. The wrinkled duennas, who under various pretexts brought him
tender messages and tempting assignations, met, instead of the golden
guerdon with which such Mercuries are usually rewarded, harsh rebuffs
and cutting sarcasm at the hands of the stoic of two-and-twenty. And
with so much scorn did this Manchegan Joseph repel on one occasion the
amorous attentions of a lady of birth and station, that her indiscreet
love was changed into bitter hate, and Federico narrowly escaped a
dagger-stab and a premature death. From that day, he was more
inaccessible than ever, not only to women, but to men. Gradually he
withdrew from intercourse with his former associates and was seldom seen
in the streets or public places, but sat at home, buried amongst books,
and diligently studying, with the intention, he was heard to declare, of
going to Ciudad Real, and passing his examination as advocate in the
royal courts. And thus, little by little, it happened with Federico as
it does with most persons who neglect and forget the world, the world
forgot him. His old intimates--joyous, light-hearted lads, revelling in
the enjoyments and dissipation of the capital--voted him a spoil-sport
and a pedant, and thought of him no more: friends, in the true sense of
the word, he had none; and so, after a very short time, the list of
visitors to the gloomy old apartment in which the eccentric youth mused
and studied was reduced to one man, and