_ Pelona, _Tia_ Blasia,
according to their name, and which answer to the French Mother Michel,
Mother Godichon, in the society Paul de Kock delights to sketch. Her
large, black, cadaverous physiognomy was relieved by dark sunken eyes,
and by a pair of mustaches shading the corners of her lips. Although she
had long passed the age of coquetry, she arranged her elbows under her
serge mantilla with an air of no small pretension, and flirted with a
certain dexterity a large green paper fan. It could hardly be the sight
of this amiable creature that brought a smile of satisfaction across the
features of Don Andres.

The second occupant of the cabriolet was a young girl, sixteen or
eighteen years old--sixteen rather than eighteen. A black silk mantilla,
drooping from the top of a tall tortoiseshell comb, round which a
magnificent plait of hair was twisted, formed a frame to her lovely
countenance, whose paleness bordered on the olive. Her foot, worthy of a
Chinese beauty, was extended on the front of the calash, showing a
delicate satin shoe and a tight silk stocking with coloured clocks. One
of her hands, slender and well formed, although a little sun-burnt,
played with the corners of her mantilla, and on the other, which held a
white handkerchief, sparkled several silver rings--the richest treasures
of the manola's jewel-case. Buttons of jet glittered on her sleeve,
completing this strictly Spanish costume. Andres recognised the charming
creature whose image had haunted him during the whole of the past week.
Accelerating his pace, he entered the bull-ring at the same time with
the two women. Chance had so distributed the numbers of the stalls that
Andres found himself seated next to the young manola.

Whilst the benches of the amphitheatre became rapidly covered with
spectators, the bull-fighters assembled in a large white-washed
apartment, serving as a green-room for the actors in the sanguinary
drama. Amongst these was a man of five or eight-and-twenty, whose tawny
complexion, jet-black eyes, and crisp curling hair, told of an
Andalusian origin. A more robust body and better shaped limbs could
hardly be seen. They exhibited strength and agility combined in the
happiest proportions. Equally well qualified to run and to wrestle,
Nature, had she had the express intention of making a bull-fighter,
could not have succeeded better than when she moulded this slender
Hercules. Through the opening of his cloak glittered the spang