organization of the famous _Escuela de Mareantes_
(navigators) of Triana. The Government bore the cost of maintenance
and instruction of the pupils of this school, to which were admitted
only poor and orphaned boys of noble extraction. Gustavo fulfilled all
these requirements. Indeed, his family, which had come to Seville at
the close of the sixteenth century or at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, from Flanders, was one of the most distinguished
of the town. It had even counted among its illustrious members a
Seville Veinticuatro, and no one who was unable to present proof of
noble lineage could aspire to that distinction.[1]

[Footnote 1: "Don Martin Becquer, _mayorazgo_ and _Veinticuatro_, of
Seville, native of Flanders, married Dona Ursula Diez de Tejada.
Born to them were Don Juan and Dona Mencia Becquer. The latter
married Don Julian Dominguez, by whom she had a son Don Antonio
Dominguez y Becquer, who in turn contracted marriage with Dona Maria
Antonia Insausti y Bausa. Their son was Don Jose Dominguez Insausti
y Bausa, husband of Dona Joaquina Bastida y Vargas, and father of
the poet Becquer." The arms of the family "were a shield of azure
with a chevron of gold, charged with five stars of azure, two leaves
of clover in gold in the upper corners of the shield, and in the
point a crown of gold." The language of the original is not
technical, and I have translated literally. See _Carta a M. Achille
Fouquier_, by D. Jose Gestoso y Perez, in _La Ilustracion
Artistica_, pp. 363-366.]

Among the students of San Telmo there was one, Narciso Campillo, for
whom Gustavo felt a special friendship,--a lad whose literary tastes,
like his own, had developed early, and who was destined, later on, to
occupy no mean position in the field of letters. Writing of those days
of his youth, Senor Campillo says: "Our childhood friendship was
strengthened by our life in common, wearing as we did the same
uniform, eating at the same table, and sleeping in an immense hall,
whose arches, columns, and melancholy lamps, suspended at intervals, I
can see before me still.

"I enjoy recalling this epoch of our first literary utterance
(_vagido_), and I say _our_, for when he was but ten years old and I
eleven, we composed and presented in the aforesaid school (San Telmo)
a fearful and extravagant drama, which, if my memory serves me right,
was entitled Los _Conjurados_ ('The Conspirators'). We likewise beg