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Huddled up in a cope of gold wrought silk he peered around. Society had rallied in force. A christening—and not a child's. Rarely had he witnessed, before the font, so many brilliant people. Were it an heir to the DunEden acres instead of what it was the ceremony could have hardly drawn together a more distinguished throng. Monsignor Silex moved a finger from forehead to chin, and from ear to ear. The Duquesa DunEden's escapades, if continued, would certainly cost the Cardinal his hat. Here Saints and Kings had been baptized, and royal Infantas, and sweet Poets, whose high names thrilled the heart. Monsignor Silex crossed his breast. He must gather force to look about him. Frame a close report. The Pontiff, in far-off Italy, would expect precision. Beneath the state baldequin, or Grand Xaymaca, his Eminence sat enthroned ogled by the wives of a dozen grandees. The Altamissals, the Villarasas their grandee-ships' approving glances, indeed, almost eclipsed their wives' , and Catherine, Countess of Constantine, the most talked-of beauty in the realm, looking like some wild limb of Astaroth in a little crushed 'toreador' hat round as an athlete's coif with hanging silken balls, while beside her a stout, dumpish dame, of enormous persuasion, was joggling, solicitously, an object that was of the liveliest interest to all. Head archly bent, her fine arms divined through darkling laces, the Duquesa stood, clasping closely a week-old police-dog in the ripple of her gown. What,—disquieting doubt,—if it were her Grace's offspring after all? Praise heaven, he was ignorant enough regarding the schemes of nature, but in an old lutrin once he had read of a young woman engendering a missel-thrush through the channel of her nose. It had created a good deal of scandal to be sure at the time: the Holy Inquisition, indeed, had condemned the impudent baggage, in consequence, to the stake. The presence of Madame San Seymour surprised him; one habitually so set apart and devout! By and by, a bone. Tail awag, sex apparent to the affected slight confusion of the Infanta Eulalia-Irene , he crouched, his eyes fixed wistfully upon the nozzle of his son. Ah, happy delirium of first parenthood! Adoring pride! Even the modest sacristan, at attention by the font, felt himself to be superior of parts to a certain unproductive chieftain of a princely House, who had lately undergone a course of asses' milk in the surrounding mountains—all in vain! Of unusual elegance, and with the remains, moreover, of perfect looks, he was as wooed and run after by the ladies as any matador. Ave Maria purissima! What challenging snarls and measured mystery marked the elaborate recognition of father and son, and would no one then forbid their incestuous frolics? In agitation Monsignor Silex sought fortitude from the storied windows overhead, aglow in the ambered light as some radiant missal. It was Saint Eufraxia's Eve, she of Egypt, a frail unit numbered above among the train of the Eleven Thousand Virgins: an immaturish schoolgirl of a saint, unskilled, inexperienced in handling a prayer, lacking, the vim and native astuteness of the incomparable Theresa. Yes; divine interference, 'twixt father and son, was hardly to be looked for, and Eufraxia she of Egypt had failed too often before Monsignor Silex started slightly, as, from the estrade beneath the dome, a choir-boy let fall a little white spit. Out into the open, over the Lapis Lazuli of the floor, they flashed, with stifled yelps, like things possessed. But the duquesa had withdrawn, it seemed, to repair her ravaged roses, and from the obscurity of an adjacent confessional-box was calling to order Crack. It was a twilight planned for wooing, unbending, consent; many, before now, had come to grief on an evening such. Pacing a cloistered walk, laden with the odour of sun-tired flowers, the Cardinal could not but feel the insidious influences astir. The bells of the institutions of the Encarnacion and the Immaculate Conception, joined in confirming Angelus, had put on tones half-bridal, enough to create vague longings, of sudden tears, among the young patrician boarders. But in the shifting underlight about him the flushed camellias and the sweet night-jasmines suggested none; neither did the shape of a garden-Eros pointing radiantly the dusk. Yes, enveloping women like Luna Sainz, with their lachrymose, tactless 'mys,' how shake them off? Yet once in a way, perhaps, he was not averse to being favoured by a glimpse of her: 'A little visit on a night like this. In the gloom there, among the high thickets of bay and flowering myrtle For, after all, bless her, one could not well deny she possessed the chief essentials: 'such, poor soul, as they are! Bearing a biretta and a silver shawl, Madame Poco, the venerable Superintendent-of-the-palace, looking, in the blue moonlight, like some whiskered skull, emerged, after inconceivable peepings, from among the leafy limbo of the trees. Ah, sangre mio , in what times we live! Ambling a few steps pensively side by side, they moved through the brilliant moonlight. It was the hour when the awakening fireflies are first seen like atoms of rosy flame floating from flower to flower. The tones of the seguidilla had deepened and from the remote recesses of the garden arose a bedlam of nightingales and frogs. With the Pirelli pride, with resourceful intimacy he communed with his heart: deception is a humiliation; but humiliation is a Virtue—a Cardinal, like myself, and one of the delicate violets of our Lady's crown Once in the street in mufti, how foolish they became. The dear street. The adorable Avenidas. The quickening stimulus of the crowd: truly it was exhilarating to mingle freely with the throng! Disguised as a cabellero from the provinces or as a matron disliking to forgo altogether the militant bravoura of a skirt , it became possible to combine philosophy, equally, with pleasure. The promenade at the Trinidades seldom failed to be diverting, especially when the brown Bettita or the Ortiz danced! The Argentina with Blanca Sanchez was amusing too; her ear-tickling little song 'Madrid is on the Manzanares,' trailing the ''ares' indefinitely, was sure, in due course, to reach the Cloisters. Deliberating critically on the numerous actresses of his diocese, he traversed lightly a path all enclosed by pots of bergamot. Purring to himself, and frequently pausing, he made his way, by ecstatic degrees, towards the mirador on the garden wall. Although a mortification, it was imperative to bear in mind the consequences of cutting a too dashing figure. Beware display. Vanity once had proved all but fatal: 'I remember it was the night I wore ringlets and was called 'my queen. And with a fleeting smile, Don Alvaro Pirelli recalled the persistent officer who had had the effrontery to attempt to molest him: 'Stalked me the whole length of the Avenue Isadora! Dating from the period of the Reformation of the Nunneries, it commanded the privacy of many a drowsy patio. Suspended in the miracle of the moonlight their elfin globes were at their zenith. After the tobacco-factory and the railway-station, quite the liveliest spot in all the city was the cathedral-sacristia. In the interim of an Office it would be besieged by the laity, often to the point of scrimmage: aristocrats and mendicants, relatives of acolytes—each had some truck or other in the long lofty room. Here the secretary of the chapter, a burly little man, a sound judge of women and bulls, might be consulted gratis, preferably before the supreme heat of day. Indulgences, novenas, terms for special masses—with flowers and music? Or, just plain; the expense, it varied! Bookings for baptisms, it was certainly advisable to book well ahead; some mothers booked before the birth—; ah-hah, the little Juans and Juanas; the angelic babies! And arrangements for a corpse's lying-in-state: 'Leave it to me. But the secretarial bureau was but merely a speck in the vast shuttered room. As a rule, it was by the old pagan sarcophaguses, outside the vestry-door, 'waiting for Father,' that aficianados of the cult liked best to foregather. It was the morning of the Feast of San Antolin of Panticosa, a morning so sweet, and blue and luminous, and many were waiting. Of distinguished presence, with dark matted curls at either ear, she was the apotheosis of flesh triumphant. But the entry from the vestry of a file of monsignore imposed a transient silence—a silence which was broken only by the murmur of passing mule bells along the street. Tingaling, tingaling: evocative of grain and harvest the sylvan sound of mule bells came and went. With his family all about him, the celebrant, a youth of the People, looking childishly happy in his first broidered cope, had bent, more than once, his good-natured head, to allow some small brothers and sisters to inspect his tonsure. Yes, as I was saying. Once he had confined by accident a lady in the souterrains of the cathedral, and only many days later had her bones and a diary, a diary documenting the most delicate phases of solitude and loneliness, a woman's contribution to Science , come to light; a piece of carelessness that had gone against the old man in his preferment. Above her hung a sombre Ribera, in a frame of elaborate, blackened gilding. Mother Garcia waved with her bouquet towards an adjacent portal, surmounted, with cool sobriety, by a long, lavender marble cross. Few women, however, are indifferent to the seduction of a Maiden Mass, and all in a second there was scarcely one to be found in the whole sacristia. The secretary at his bureau looked about him: without the presence of las mujares the atmosphere seemed to weigh a little; still, being a Holiday of Obligation, a fair sprinkling of boys, youthful chapter hands whom he would sometimes designate as the 'lesser delights,' relieved the place of its austerity. Through the heraldic windows, swathed in straw-mats to shut out the heat, the sun-rays entered, tattooing with piquant freckles the pampered faces of the choir. A request for a permit to view the fabled Orangery in the cloisters interrupted his siestose fancies. Like luxurious cygnets in their cloudy lawn, a score of young singing-boys were awaiting their cue: Low-masses, cheapness, and economy, how they despised them, and how they would laugh at 'Old Ends' who snuffed out the candles. The question had just been put by the owner of a dawning moustache and a snub, though expressive, nose. People grudge spending much on a snivel—even if it lasts an hour. Indulged, and made-much-of by the hierarchy, he was Felix Ganay, known as Chief-dancing-choir-boy to the cathedral of Clemenza. Fingering a score of music he had been taking lead in a mass of Palestrina, and had the vaguely distraught air of a kitten that had seen visions. Considered an opportunist, he was one of the privileged six dancing-boys of the cathedral. Finely sensitive as to his prerogatives, the interference of his colleague was apt to vex him. He would be trying to clip an altar pose next. Indeed, it was a matter of scandal already, how he was attempting to attract attention, in influential places, by the unnecessary undulation of his loins, and by affecting strong scents and attars, such as Egyptian Tahetant, or Long flirt through the violet Hours. Himself, Felix, he was faithful to Royal Florida, or even to plain eau-de-Cologne , and to those slow Mozarabic movements which alone are seemly to the Church. Friend of all sweets and dainties, he held San Antolin's day chiefly notable for the Saint's sweet biscuits, made of sugar and white-of-egg. Mind your business, can't you? Amalia Bermudez, the fashionable Actress-manageress of the Teatro Victoria Eugenia, was becoming a source of terror to the chapter of Clemenza. Every morning, with fatal persistence, she would aboard the half-hypnotised secretary with the request that the Church should make 'a little christian' of her blue chow, for unless it could be done it seemed the poor thing wasn't chic. To be chic and among the foremost vanward; this, apart from the Theatre, meant all to her in life, and since the unorthodox affair of 'the DunEdens,' she had been quite upset by the chapter's evasive refusals. Little devil. Ah, believe me, Father, she has need of it; for she's supposed to have had a snake by my old dog Conqueror! And yet you won't receive her? Oh, it's heartless. Men are cruel Amalia—the Bermudez': the whisper spread, arresting the story of the black Bishop of Bechuanaland, just begun by the roguish Ramon. But this morning the clear, light laugh of the comedienne rang out merrily. I desire only to offer 'a Mass of Intention,' fully choral, that the Church may change her mind. And when the cannon that told of Noon was fired from the white fortress by the river far away she was still considering programmes of music by Rossini and Cimarosa, and the colour of the chasubles which the clergy should wear. At the season when the oleanders are in their full perfection, their choicest bloom, it was the Pontiff's innovation to install his American type-writing apparatus in the long Loggie of the Apostolic Palace that had been in disuse since the demise of Innocent XVI. Out-of-doorish, as Neapolitans usually are, Pope Tertius II was no exception to the rule, preferring blue skies to golden ceilings—a taste for which indeed many were inclined to blame him. A compromise between the state-saloons and the modest suite occupied by his Holiness from choice, these open Loggie, adorned with the radiant frescoes of Luca Signorelli, would be frequently the scene of some particular Audience, granted after the exacting press of official routine. Late one afternoon the Pontiff after an eventful and arduous day was walking thoughtfully here alone. Participating no longer in the joys of the world, it was, however, charming to catch, from time to time, the distant sound of Rome—the fitful clamour of trams and cabs, and the plash of the great twin-fountains in the court of Saint Damascus. Wrapped in grave absorption, with level gaze, the lips slightly pinched, Pope Tertius II paced to and fro, occasionally raising a well-formed though hairy hand, as though to dismiss his thoughts with a benediction. The nomination of two Vacant Hats, the marriage annulment of an ex-hereditary Grand Duchess, and the 'scandals of Clemenza,' were equally claiming his attention and ruffling his serenity. He had the head of an elderly lady's-maid, and an expression concealed by layers of tactful caution. She was the gift of the Archbishop of Trebizond, who had found her in the region of the Coelian hill. It was incredible with what playful zest she would spring from statue to statue; and it would have amused the Vicar of Christ to watch her slip and slide, had it not suggested many a profound moral metaphor applicable to the Church. It was the turn-in-waiting of Baron Oschatz, a man of engaging exquisite manners, and of Count Cuenca, an individual who seemed to be in perpetual consternation. Depositing a few of the most recent camera portraits of the Pontiff requiring autograph in a spot where he could not fail but see them, they formally withdrew. It had been a day distinguished by innumerable Audiences, several not uninteresting to recall Certainly the increasing numbers of English were decidedly promising, and bore out the sibylline predictions of their late great and sagacious ruler—Queen Victoria. Heliolatries and sun-worshippers,' she had written in her most masterful hand, 'and your Holiness may believe us,' she had added, 'when we say especially our beloved Scotch. There had been a meeting of the Board for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, and when, shortly afterwards, the Cardinal was admitted he bore still about him some remote trace of faction. He had the air of a cuttle-fish, and an inquiring voice. Inclined to gesture, how many miles must his hands have moved in the course of the sermons that he had preached! See Vesuvius, and die , he had curly hair that seemed to grow visibly; every few hours his tonsure would threaten to disappear. In which case, the earlier, the better, the unfrocking An evening rose and radiant altogether A nephew of the Dean of the Sacred College, it was rumoured that he was addicted, in his 'home' above Frascati, to the last excesses of the pre-Adamite Sultans. He had been unstrung all day, 'just a mass of foolish nerves,' owing to a woman, an American, it seemed, coming for her Audience in a hat edged with white and yellow water-lilies. She had been repulsed successfully by the Papal Guard, but it had left an unpleasant impression. Dating from the period of Don Pedro el cruel , the palace had been once the residence of the famous Princesse des Ursins, who had left behind something of her conviviality and glamour. And thus, in deference to the intimate nature of the occasion, it was felt by the solicitous hostess that a Tertulia that mutual exchange of familiar or intellectual ideas would make less demand on arms and legs than would a ball: just the mind and lips Should she wait for Gloria and Clyte they might be some time or return to the convent and come back again at twelve? Hopeful of glimpsing perhaps a colleague, Mother Saint-Mary moved a few steps impulsively in their wake. It was known that Monseigneur the Cardinal-Archbishop himself was expected, and not infrequently one ecclesiastic will beget another. Being the day it was, and the social round never but slightly varying, most of the guests had flocked earlier in the evening to the self-same place, i. Wedded to one of the handsomest though dullest of men, Marvilla de Las Espinafre's perfervid and exalted nature kept her little circle in constant awe, and she would be often jealous of the Forests chiefly scrub which her husband, in his official capacity, was called upon to survey. I know it! You've been to the woods. Because you've been among the Myrtles ,' was the explanation she chose to give for severing conjugal relations. But a lover's none the worse in my opinion for acquiring technique,' the Duchess of Sarmento declared. I expect he has a little woman to whom he takes off his clothes,' she murmured, turning to admire the wondrous Madonna of the Mule-mill attributed to Murillo. On a wall-sofa just beneath, crowned with flowers and aigrettes, sat Conca, Marchioness of Macarnudo. She had known her 'dearest Luiza' since the summer the sun melted the church bells and their rakish, pleasure-loving, affectionate hearts had dissolved together. But this had not been yesterday; no; for the Marchioness was a grandmother now. But there it is! And, anyway, dear,' the Marchioness dropped her voice, 'he keeps me from thinking ah perhaps more than I should of my little grandson. Imagine, Luiza Fifteen, white and vivid rose, and ink-black hair Surprised, and considerably edified, by the sight of the dowager in prayer, Mother Saint-Mary-of-the-Angels was emboldened to advance: The lovely, self-willed donkey or was it a mule? She wore a gown of ivory-black with heavy golden roses and a few of her large diamonds of ceremony. She was looking like the ghost in the Ballet of Ghislaine, after an unusually sharp touch of Boheara; eight-and-forty hours in bed, and, scandal declared, not alone. It was the boudoir of the Winterhalters and Isabeys, once the bright glory of the Radziwollowna collection, which, after several decades of disesteem, were returning to fashion and favour. The gift of a dear and once intimate friend, the dog seemed inclined to outlive itself and become a nuisance. Alas, poor, fawning Clapsey! Fond, toothless bitch. Return to your broken doze, and dream again of leafy days in leafy Parks, and comfy drives and escapades long ago. What sights you saw when you could see; fountains, and kneeling kings, and grim beggars at Church doors those at San Eusebio were the worst. And sheltered spas by glittering seas: Santander! And dark adulteries and dim woods at night. Besides, oh, my God! He was looking rather Richelieu, draped in ermines and some old lace of a beautiful fineness. Each year meaner. There was a time when the DunEdens gave balls, and one could count, as a rule, on supper. To-night, there's nothing but a miserable Buffet, with flies trimming themselves on the food; and the champagne that I tasted, well, I can assure your Eminence it was more like foul flower-water than Mumm. It was the turn of the tide, and soon admittance to the boudoir had ceased causing 'heartburnings. Conspicuous among these was Catherine the ideal-questing, God-groping and insouciant , Countess of Constantine, the aristocratic heroine of the capital, looking half-charmed to be naked and alive. Possessing but indifferent powers of conversation—at Tertulias and dinners she seldom shone—it was yet she who had coined that felicitous phrase: Some men's eyes are sweet to rest in. Limping a little, since she had sprained her foot, alas, while turning backward somersaults to a negro band in the black ballroom of the Infanta Eulalia-Irene, her reappearance after the misadventure was a triumph. Clasping a large bouquet of American Beauty-roses, the Poetess Diana Beira Baixa was being besieged by admirers, to 'give them something; just something! Anything of her own. But requests for 'something; just something! Repairing the vast armholes of a chasuble, Madame Poco, the venerable Superintendent-of-the-palace, considered, as she worked, the social status of a Spy. It was not without a fleeting qualm that she had crossed the borderland that divides mere curiosity from professional vigilance, but having succumbed to the profitable proposals of certain monsignori, she had grown as keen on her quarry as a tigress on the track. For indeed the Higher-curiosity is inexorably exacting, encroaching, all too often, on the hours of slumber and rest. True blue. Forgetful of her needle, she peered interestedly on her image in a mirror on the neighbouring wall. It was a sensation of pleasant novelty to feel between her skull and her mantilla the notes of the first instalment of her bribe. Since becoming the courted favourite of the chapter, she had taken to strutting-and-languishing in private before her mirror, improvising occult dance-steps, semi-sacred in character, modelled on those of Felix Ganay at White Easter, all in the flowery Spring. Ceremonial poses such as may be observed in storied-windows and olden pietas in churches Dalilaesque, or Shulamitish, as the case might be were her especial delight, and from these had been evolved an eerie 'Dance of Indictment. You old sly gooseberry,' she chuckled, gloating on herself in the greenish-spotted depth of a tall, time-corroded glass. It was a Sunday evening of corrida , towards the Feast of Corpus, and through the wide-open window came the near sound of bells. They were ringing 'Paula,' a bell which, tradition said, had fused into its metal one of the thirty pieces of silver received by the Iscariot for the betrayal of Christ. It was her resolution to divide her reward between masses for herself and the repose and 'release' from Purgatory of her husband's soul, while anything over should be laid out on finery for a favourite niece, the little Leonora, away in the far Americas. She was growing increasingly conscious of the physical demands made by the Higher-curiosity upon a constitution already considerably far-through, and the need of an auxiliary caused her to regret her niece. More than once, indeed, she had been near the point of asking Charlotte Chiemsee, the maid of the Duchess of Vizeu, to assist her. It was Charlotte who had set the duchess's bed-veils on fire while attempting to nip a romance. But alone and unaided it was astonishing the evidence Madame Poco had gained, and she smiled, as she sewed, at the recollection of her latest capture—the handkerchief of Luna Sainz. For Madame Poco had some experience of men—those brown humbugs so delicious in tenderness —in her time. He had the prettiest teeth He had been coachman for many years to the sainted Countess of Triana, and he would tell the story of the pious countess and the vermin she had turned to flowers of flame while foraging one day among some sacks before a second-hand-clothes shop. It was she, too, who, on another occasion, had changed a handful of marsh-slush into fine slabs of chocolate, each slab engraved with the insignia of a Countess and the sign of the Cross. Concealed among its contents was a copy of the gay and curious Memoirs of Mlle. Emma Crunch , so famous as 'Cora Pearl';—a confiscated bedside-book once belonging to the Cardinal-Archbishop. She had been freshening a little the chasuble worn last by his Eminence at the baptism of the blue-eyed police-pup of the Duquesa DunEden, which bore still the primrose trace of an innocent insult. It takes a lot to beat aniseed brandy; when it's old. Manzanilla runs it close; but it's odd how a glass or two turns me muzzy. She remained a moment lost in idle reverie before the brilliant embroideries in her basket. Bits of choice beflowered brocade, multi-tinted, inimitably faded silks of the epoca of Theresa de Ahumada, exquisite tatters, telling of the Basilica's noble past, it gladdened the eyes to gaze on. What garden of Granada could show a pink to match that rose, or what sky show a blue as tenderly serene as that azure of the Saint Virgin? She had last seen the Cardinal coming from the orange orchard with a dancing-boy and Father Fadrique, who had a mark on his cheek left by a woman's fan. Traversing a white-walled corridor, with the chasuble on her arm, her silhouette, illumined by the splendour of the evening sun, all but caused her to start. It was in a wing built in the troublous reign of Alfonso the Androgyne that the vestments were kept. Whisking by a decayed and ancient painting, representing 'Beelzebub' at Home, she passed slowly through a little closet supposed to be frequented by the ghosts of evil persons long since dead. Just off it was the vestry, gay with blue azulejos tiles of an admirable lustre. She had her 'favourites' among the bells, and Matteo was one of them. Passiaflora, too—but Anna, a light slithery bell, 'like a housemaid in hysterics,' offended her ear by lack of tone; Sebastian, a complaining, excitable bell, was scarcely better,—'a fretful lover! Lifting a rosary from a linen-chest, Madame Poco laid the chasuble within. It was towards this season she would usually renew the bags of bergamot among the Primate's robes. Black as the Evil One, perched upon a Confessional's ledge, cleansing its belly, the sleek thing sat. It was the 'ledge of forgotten fans,' where privileged Penitents would bring their tales of vanity, infidelity and uncharitableness to the Cardinal once a week. With a plume at the side or a cluster of balls, it would make quite a striking toque, she decided, casting a fluttered glance on the male effigy of a pale-faced member of the Quesada family, hewn in marble by the door. I thought it was the Cardinal; it gave me quite a turn,' she murmured, pursuing lightly her way. Being a Sunday evening of corrida, it was probable the Cardinal had mounted to his aerie, to enjoy the glimpse of Beauty returning from the fight. Following a darkened corridor with lofty windows closely barred, Madame Poco gained an ambulatory, terminated by a fresco of Our Lady, ascending to heaven in a fury of paint. Already the blue pushing shadows were beguiling from the shelter of the cloister eaves the rueful owls. A few flittermice, too, were revolving around the long apricot chimneys of the Palace, that, towards sunset, looked like the enchanted castle of some sleeping Princess. Wary of mole-hills and treacherous roots, she roamed along, preceded by the floating whiteness of a Persian peacock, mistrustful of the intentions of a Goat-sucker owl. Rounding a sequestered garden seat, beneath an aged cypress, the bark all scented knots, Madame Poco halted. Kneeling before an altar raised to the cult of Our Lady of Dew, Cardinal Pirelli was plunged in prayer. Founded during the internecine wars of the Middle Age, the College, according to early records, had suffered rapine on the first day of term. Hardly, it seemed, had the last scholar's box been carried upstairs than a troop of military had made its appearance at the Pension gate demanding, with 'male peremptoriness,' a billet. Polishing urbanely her delicate nails, the actual President, a staid, pale woman with a peacock nose, recalled the chequered past. She hoped his Eminence when he addressed the girls, on handing them their prizes, would refer to the occasion with all the tactfulness required. She was ensconced in a ponderous fauteuil of figured velvet intended for the plump posterior of Royalty beneath the incomparable 'azulejos' ceiling of the Concert-room, awaiting the return of Madame Always Alemtejo, the English governess, from the printers, in the Plaza de Jesus, with the little silver-printed programmes so like the paste-board cards of brides! Don't exaggerate,' the President enjoined, raising a hand to the diamonds on her heavy, lead-white cheeks. Bear in mind your moral,' she begged, with a lingering glance at her robe of grey georgette. The word 'moral,' never long from the President's lips, seemed, with her, to take on an intimate tinge, a sensitiveness of its own. She would invest the word at times with an organic significance, a mysterious dignity, that resembled an avowal made usually only in solemn confidence to a doctor or a priest. The severity of my moral. The prestige of my moral. The perfection of my moral. She has no dignity of moral. I fear a person of no positive moral. Nothing to injure the freshness of her moral. A difficulty of moral. The etiquette of my moral. The majesty of my moral, etc. British born, hailing from fairy Lisbon, Madame Always Alemtejo seemed resigned to live and die in a land of hitches. But already a few novios , eager to behold their novias again, were in the Patio beneath the 'Heiresses' Wing,' exciting the connoisseurship of a bevy of early freshness. Adios , Juan. Join you down dah in one minute. Delighting in the tender ferocities of Aphrodite, she was ever ready to unite the novio to the novia. For window-vigils where all is hand play few could contrive more ingeniously than she those fans of fresh decapitated flowers, tuberose punctuated with inebriating jasmine, so beloved in the East by the dark children of the sun. Beyond Cadiz the blue, the beautiful, in palm-girt Marrakesh, across the sea, she had learnt other arts besides Endowed with the lively temperament of her grandmother, Conca, Marchioness of Macarnudo, the impressionable, highly amative nature of the little Obdulia gave her governesses some grounds for alarm. At the Post Office one day she had watched a young man lick a stamp. His rosy tongue had vanquished her. In fact, at present, she and a class-chum, Milagros, were 'collecting petals' together—and much to the bewilderment of those about them, they might be heard on occasion to exclaim, at Mass, or in the street: 'Quick, did you see it? I did! As if Gerardo would look at her! But from the Patio the college chaplain, Father Damien Forment, known as 'Shiny-nose,' was beckoning to the heiresses to join their relatives in the reception-hall below. Alone unchanging are women's ambitions and men's desires. She accepts him The heiresses' windows are all opening to the flowers and trees The boy should be in polo kit. A uniform interests girls,' the President murmured, turning with an urbane smile to welcome the Duquesa DunEden. She had a frock of black kasha, signed Paul Orna, with a cluster of brown-and-pink orchids, like sheep's-kidneys, and a huge feather hat. Incongruous that this robust, rich woman should have brought to the light of heaven no heir, while the unfortunate Marchioness, needy, and frail of physique, a wraith, did not know what to do with them! She was prepared to take a dog of the daughterless Duquesa. A bitch, of course But let it be Police, or Poodle! It would lodge with the girls. A cubicle to itself in the heiresses' wing; and since there would be no extra class-charge for dancing or drawing, no course in belli arti , some reduction of fees might be arranged An eloquent tail-wave, a disciplined moral, and with a reverence moreover for house-mats and carpets. It was rare fun doing it, on account of the pirapos of the passers-by,' the artist, joining them, explained. What are their names? Have they got motor-cars there? Is there an Opera-House? Are there bulls? The leering aspect of a lady in a costume of blonde Guadalmedina lace and a hat wreathed with clipped black cocks' feathers arrested her. Illusion-proof, with a long and undismayed service in Love's House sorry brutes, all the same, though, these men, with their selfishness, fickleness and lies! Exasperated by resistance, struggling against an impossible infatuation, her Spanish ladyship was becoming increasingly subject to passing starts. Indeed only in excitement and dissipation could her unsatisfied longings find relief. Sometimes she would run out in her car to where the men bathe at Ponte Delgado, and one morning, after a ball, she had been seen standing on the main road to Cadiz in a cabuchon tiara, watching the antics of some nude muleteers: Black as young Indians —she had described them later. What next? Averting a filmy eye, she recognised Marvilla de las Espinafres, airing anti-patriotic views on birth control, her arms about an adopted daughter. I should scream! They say she jobs her mules,' the marchioness murmured, exchanging a nod with the passing President. Standing amid gardens made for suffering and delight is the disestablished and, sic transit , slowly decaying monastery of the Desierto. Lovely as Paradise, oppressive perhaps as Eden, it had been since the days of the mystic Luigi of Granada a site well suited to meditation and retreat. Here, in the stilly cypress-court, beneath the snowy sierras of Santa Maria la Blanca, Theresa of Avila, worn and ill, though sublime in laughter, exquisite in beatitude, had composed a part of the Way of Perfection , and, here, in these same realms of peace, dominating the distant city of Clemenza and the fertile plains of Andalucia, Cardinal Pirelli, one blue mid-day towards the close of summer, was idly considering his Defence. I defend myself, that's all! Divided by tranquil vineyards and orange-gardens from the malice and vindictiveness of men it was difficult to experience emotions other than of forgiveness and love. It was the forgetful hour of noon, when Hesperus from his heavens confers on his pet Peninsula the boon of sleep. Ill at ease and lonely in the austere dismantled house, she would keep an eye on him at present almost as much for company as for gain. As handsome and as elegant as ever, his physiognomy in repose revealed a thousand strange fine lines, suggestive subtleties, intermingled with less ambiguous signs, denoting stress and care. Regretting her better gown of hooped watered-silk, set aside while in retreat for economy's sake , Madame Poco fled to put it on, leaving the visitor to announce himself. Oh, every bird, every rose, could have told him that: the padre of Our Lady bringing a blue trout for his Eminence's supper from the limpid waters of Lake Orense. Respecting the Primate's rest Father Felicitas, for so, also, was he named, sat down discreetly to await his awakening. It was a rare sweetness to have the Cardinal to himself thus intimately. Mostly, in the city, he would be closely surrounded. Not that Father Felicitas went very much to town; no; he disliked the confusion of the streets, and even the glories of the blessed basilicas made him scarcely amends for the quiet shelter of his hills. The blessed basilicas, you could see them well from here. The giralda of Saint Xarifa, and the august twin towers of the cathedral, and the azulejos dome of Saint Eusebio, that was once a pagan mosque; while of Santissima Marias, Maria del Carmen, Maria del Rosario, Maria de la Soledad, Maria del Dolores, Maria de las Nieves, few cities in all the wide world could show as many. But before he had discovered it, half concealed by trees, he was reminded by the sound of a long-drawn, love-sick wail, issuing out of the very entrails of the singer, of the lad left in charge of his rod by the gate. God's will be done. It was enough to awaken the Primate. Father Felicitas could almost feel the sin of envy as he thought of the flawless choir and noble triumphal organ of the cathedral yonder. Possessed of no other instrument, Our Lady of the Valley depended at present on a humble guitar. Not that the blessed guitar, with its capacity for emotion, is unworthy to please God's listening ear, but Pepe, the lad appointed to play it, would fall all too easily into those Jotas, Tangos, and Cuban Habaneiras, learnt in wayside fondas and fairs. Some day, Father Felicitas did not doubt, Our Lady would have an organ, an organ with pipes. He had prayed for it so often; oh, so often; and once, quite in the late of twilight while coming through the church, he had seen her, it seemed, standing just where it should be. It had been as though a blinding whiteness. Across the tranquil court a rose-red butterfly pursued a blue. A rare occurrence in these days was a visitor, and now with authority ebbing, or in the balance at least, it was singular how he felt a new interest in the concerns of the diocese. Sailing down the courtyard in her watered-silken gown, Madame Poco approached with Xeres and Manzanilla, fresh from the shuttered snowery or nieveria. It was she who would bake the old Greek Sun-bread, and although her heirs had sought high and low no one could find the receipt. And the Alcalde of Ayamonte, Don Deniz, had died on the eve of the bachelors' party he usually gave when he took off his winter beard. Ah, yes, and since the delicacies ordered by the corpse could not well be countermanded they had been divided among Christ's poor. Half the diocese it seemed had gone 'Therewards,' while the rest were at Biarritz or Santander Among the blue, pointing shadows, a few frail oleanders in their blood-rose ruby invoked warm brief life and earth's desires. The forsaken splendour of the vast closed cloisters seemed almost to augur the waning of a cult. Likewise the decline of Apollo, Diana, Isis, with the gradual downfall of their Temples, had been heralded, in past times, by the dispersal of their priests. It looked as though Mother Church, like Venus or Diana, was making way in due turn for the beliefs that should follow: 'and we shall begin again with intolerance, martyrdom and converts,' the Cardinal ruminated, pausing before an ancient fresco depicting the eleven thousand virgins, or as many as there was room for. Flinging back a shutter drawn fast against the sun, the boundless prospect from the balcony of his cell recalled the royal Escorial. The white scattered terraces of villas set in dark deeps of trees, tall palms, and parasol-pines so shady, and, almost indistinguishable, the white outline of the sea, made insensibly for company. Frequently it would bring Frasquito, the postman—a big tawny boy, overgiven to passing the day in the woods with his gun and his guitar. It was Cardinal Pirelli's fancy while in retreat to assume his triple-Abraham, or mitre, and with staff in hand to roam abroad as in the militant Springtide of the Church. It was around the Moorish water-garden towards shut of day he liked most to wander, seeking like some Adept to interpret in the still deep pools the mirrored music of the sky. All, was it vanity? These pointing stars and spectral leaning towers, this mitre, this jewelled ring, these trembling hands, these sweet reflected colours, white of daffodil and golden rose. Circling the tortuous paths like some hectic wingless bird, he was called to the refectory by the tintinnabulation of a bell. In the deep gloominous room despoiled of all splendour but for a dozen old Zurbarans flapping in their frames, a board, set out with manifest care, was prepared for the evening meal. Perhaps of the many charges brought against the Primate by his traducers, that of making the sign of the cross with his left foot at meals was the most utterly unfounded—looking for a foot-cushion would have been nearer the truth. Addressing the table briefly in the harmonious Latin tongue, his Eminence sat down with an impenetrable sigh. With vine-sprays clinging languorously to the candle-stands, rising from a bed of nespoles, tulips, and a species of wild orchid known as Devil's-balls, the Chicklet, to judge from his floral caprices, possessed a little brain of some ambition, not incapable of excess. While in retreat it was his fancy, while supping, to pursue some standard work of devotion, such as Orthodoxy so often encourages or allows: it was with just such a golden fairy-tale as this that he had once won a convert: Poor woman. What had become of her? Her enthusiasm, had it lasted? She had been very ardent. Saint Xarifa's at fall of day; Chrysanthemums; big bronze frizzlies. A Mrs. Mandarin Dove. Ninety million sterling. Social pride and religious humility, how can I reconcile? The women in Chicago. My God!!! My little step-daughter Her Father, fortunately Yes, your Eminence, he's dead. And, oh, I'm glad. Is it naughty? James,' he reflected, toying with the fine table-glass of an old rich glamour. A fluted bell cup sadly chipped provoked a criticism and a citation from Cassiodorus on the 'rude' ways of boys. Revolving around an austere piece of furniture that resembled a Coffin-upon-six-legs, the Chicklet appeared absorbed. Who says so? Or the tomb of the beautiful Princess Eboli, the beloved of Philip the Second, sir? The difficulty was to apply the henna; evenly everywhere; fair play all round; no favouring the right side more than the left, but golden Justice for each grey hair. Impartiality: proportion! Bring on the dulces , boy,' his Eminence murmured, regarding absently through the window the flickering arc-lights of Clemenza far away. It was while lingering, after dinner, over some choice vintage, that he oftenest would develop the outline of his Defence. To escape the irate horns of the Pontiff's bull Die, dull beast he proposed pressing the 'Pauline Privilege,' unassailable, and confirmed A. Resting an elbow among the nespoles and tulips dawn-pink and scarlet, awakening sensitively in the candle-glow , he refilled reflectively his glass. Being just then the gracious Autumn, a sweet golden-plum called 'Don Jaime of Castile' was in great perfection. It had been for the Southern orchards a singularly fertile year. Never were seen such gaily rouged peaches, such sleek, violet cherries, such immensest white grapes. Nestling delectably amid its long, deeply-lobed leaves, a pomegranate fruit of joy attracted the Cardinal's hand. Its seeds, round and firm as castanets, evoked the Ortiz. The evening she waved her breasts at me! Interpreting God's world, with her roguish limbs and voice, how witching the child had been but lately in The Cistus of Venus. Her valse-refrain 'Green Fairy Absinthe' with a full chorus in tights had been certainly, theatrically if, perhaps, not socially , the hit of the season. The Archbishop of Archidona, for all his air of pomposity, looked not unsympathetic, neither, indeed, did a little lady with a nimbus, casting melting glances through the spokes of a mystic wheel. Sometimes, after the fifth or sixth bumper, the great Theresa herself would flit in from the garden. Long had her radiant spirit 'walked' the Desierto, seeking, it was supposed, a lost sheet of the manuscript of her Way of Perfection. It may have been following on the seventh or even the eighth bumper that the Primate remarked he was not alone. She was standing by the window in the fluttered moonshine, holding a knot of whitish heliotropes. Verifying private dates, revising here and there the cathedral list of charges, Don Moscosco, the secretary of the chapter, seated before his usual bureau, was at the disposal of the public. A ministerial crisis had brought scattered Fashion home to town with a rush, and the pressure of work was enormous. Before allotting a chapel for a mass of Intent, it was his rule to analyse and classify the 'purity' of the intention adding five per cent. It was the twenty-first day of September which is the Feast of Saint Firmin , and the sacristia, thronged with mantons and monsignori, resembled some vast shifting parterre of garden-flowers. In honour of Saint Firmin the door of Pardon closed half the year had just been thrown open, bringing from the basilica an odour of burning incense and the strains of a nuptial march. How many of the bridal guests knew of the coffin installed in the next chapel but one? By her immense hooped earrings, as large as armlets, he knew her for the Adonira, the mistress of the toreador Tancos. It's all done , dear lady,' the words were on Don Moscosco's lips. Still, being the pink of chivalry with las mujares and a man of business, he murmured: 'With what quantity of lights? As many only as the animal's horns. It's amazing how some women stint,' he reflected, faintly nettled. The marriage ceremony was over. From the summit of the giralda, volley on volley, the vibrant bells proclaimed the consummation. With a rose mole here and a strawberry mole there, men those adorable monsters accounted her entirely attractive. I think I cried. The first spring flowers looked so beautiful. A mother's love, and contrition, perhaps, for her own shortcomings, the secretary brooded. Lost in bland speculation Don Moscosco considered the assembly collected outside the curtained camarin of the Virgin, where the gowns of the Image were dusted and changed. For Firmin she usually wore an osprey or two and perfumed ball-gloves of Cordoba, and carried a spread fan of gold Guadalmedina lace. Among devotees of the sacristia it was a perpetual wonder to observe how her costumes altered her. Sometimes she would appear quite small, dainty and French, at others she would recall the sumptuous women of the Argentine and the New World, and aficianados would lament their fairy isle of Cuba in the far-off Caribbean Sea. Despite the optimism of the gazettes it looked as though the Government must indeed be tottering, since the Duquesa too was up from her country quinta. I remember Santander, Don Moscosco imagine , when there was not even an hotel! A little fishing-village, so quiet, so quiet; ah, it was nicer, far, and more exclusive then Nevertheless, beneath the routine of the sacristia the air was surcharged with tension. Rival groups, pro- or anti-Pirellian, formed almost irreconcilable camps, and partisanship ran high. Not a few among the cathedral staff had remained true to his Eminence, and Mother Sunlight, a charwoman who sometimes performed odd jobs at the Palace , had taught her infant in arms to cry: 'Long live Spain and Cardinal Pirelli! But Sunday last, entertaining his solicitor, it seems he ordered coffee after the merienda to be served in two chamber-pots. Horrible things they keep saying. Old, and did-did-doddery, how frail he seemed beside Father Fadrique, the splendid swagger of whose chasuble every woman must admire. An office in the Chapel of the Crucifix was about to begin, recalling to their duties the scattered employees of the staff. Hovering by the collection-box for the Souls in Hades, the Moorish maid from the College of Noble Damosels, bound on an errand of trust as ancient as the world, was growing weary of watching the people come and go. It was the matter of a message from Obdulia and Milagros to the radiant youth whose lips they were so idyllically if perhaps somewhat licentiously sharing. Eastern in origin like the Mesquita of Cordoba, it was impossible to forget that the great basilica of Clemenza was a Mosque profaned. Designed for the cult of Islam, it made her African's warm heart bleed to behold it now. Would it were reconverted to its virginal state, and the cry of the muezzin be heard again summoning men to Muhammad's house! Yes, the restitution of the cathedral to Allah was Muley's cherished dream, and it consoled her, on certain days when she was homesick, to stand before the desecrated mihrab in worship, her face turned towards Africa, and palm-girt Marrakesh across the sea. Led by the pious sisters of the noble order of the Flaming-Hood, the Virgin was returning to her niche. She was arrayed as though bound for the Bull-ring, in a robe of peacock silk, and a mantilla of black lace. Midnight had ceased chiming from the Belfry tower, and the last seguidilla had died away. Looking fresh as a rose, and incredibly juvenile in his pyjamas of silver-grey and scarlet the racing colours of Vittoria, Duchess of Vizeu , the Cardinal seemed disinclined for bed. Surveying in detachment the preparatives for his journey set out beneath an El Greco Christ, with outspread, delicate hands , he was in the mood to dawdle. Among the personalia was a passport, the likeness of identity showing him in a mitre, cute to tears, though, essentially, orthodox; a flask of Napoleon brandy, to be 'declared' if not consumed before leaving the Peninsula; and a novel, Self-Essence , on the Index, or about to be. Was I too hasty? Assuredly the rebuff was unpremeditated, springing directly from the boy's behaviour, spoiling what might have been a ceremony of something more than ordinary poignance. There had been held previously during the evening, after the Basilica's scheduled closing hour, a service of 'Departure,' fastidiously private, in the presence only of the little Ostensoir-swinger 'Chicklet,' who, missing all the responses, had rushed about the cathedral after mice; for which the Cardinal, his sensitiveness hurt by the lad's disdain and frivolity, had afterwards confined him alone with them in the dark. But somehow this one——' the Cardinal sighed. Poor little Don Wilful. The chapter-mice, were they something so amusing to pursue? Repeating a sonorous line from Macrobius, the Cardinal measured himself a liqueur-glass of brandy. Poor little Don Bright-eyes, alone in the obscurity. Yum-yum,' he murmured, setting a mitre like a wondrous mustard-pot upon his head. Omnia vanitas ; it was intended for Saint Peter's. Lit by Uranus, Venus and Saturn only, the consummate tapestries on the stairs recording the Annunciation, Conception, Nativity, Presentation, Visitation, Purification and Ascension of the Virgin made welcome milestones. On a turn of the stair by the 'Conception,' a sensitive panel, chiefly white, he had the impression of a wavering shadow, as of someone following close behind. Continuing, preoccupied, his descent, he gained a postern door. A few deal cases, stoutly corded for departure, were heaped about it. Oh, the lovely night! He stood, leaning on his wand, lost in contemplation of the miracle of it. In the old lead aqua-butt, by the Chapter-house, the gossiping bull-frogs were discussing their great horned and hoofed relations He could distinguish nothing clearly at first beyond the pale forked fugitive lightning through the triple titanic windows of the chancel. Flanked by the chapels of the Crucifix, of the Virgin, of the Eldest Son of God, and of divers others, it was here as bright as day. Presumably Don April-showers was too self-abashed to answer, perhaps too much afraid It was prepared, it seemed, in anticipation of a wedding, for stately palms and branches of waxen peach-bloom stood all about. Are you there, boy? Hovering in benison he had almost a mind to adopt the boy, enter him for Salamanca or, remoter, Oxford, and perhaps by some bombshell codicil even make him his heir. Or my Cano Crucifix? I know of more than one bottle-nosed dowager who thinks she'll get it! You know my Venetian-glass, Don Endymion, is among the choicest in Spain Paternostering Phoebe Poco shadowing her master believed they never would. It seemed almost to confirm the legend of old, Mosque-sick 'Suliman,' said to stalk the temple aisles. The Cardinal twirled challengingly his stave— Bible v. Koran ; a family case; cousins; Eastern, equally, each; hardy old perennials, no less equivocal and extravagant, often, than the ever-adorable Arabian Nights! It should concentrate its roses,' he told himself, glancing out, inquiringly, into the nave. Profoundly soft and effaced, it was a place full of strange suggestion. Intersecting avenues of pillared arches, upbearing waving banners, seemed to beckon towards the Infinite. Ah, it's El Dorado, then. Of a long warrior line, he had always regarded disobedience in others as an inexcusable offence. What would have happened before the ramparts of Zaragoza, Valladolid, Leon, Burgos, had the men commanded by Ipolito Pirelli in the Peninsular War refused to obey? To be set at defiance by a youngster, a mere cock-robin, kindled elementary ancestral instincts in the Primate's veins. Sarabandish and semi-mythic was the dance that ensued. Leading by a dozen derisive steps Don Light-of-Limb took the nave. In the dusk of the dawn it seemed to await the quickening blush of day like a white-veiled negress. Men eternal hunters, novelty seekers, insatiable beings , men in their natural lives, pursue the concrete no less than the ideal—qualities not inseldom found combined in fairy childhood. Dispossessed of everything but his fabulous mitre, the Primate was nude and elementary now as Adam himself. With advancing day Don Skylark alias Bright-eyes alias Don Temptation it seemed had contrived an exit, for the cathedral was become a place of tranquillity and stillness. Peering expectantly from the silken parted curtains of a confessional, paternostering Phoebe Poco caught her breath. Confused not a little at the sight before her, her equilibrium was only maintained by the recollection of her status: 'I'm an honest widow; so I know what men are, bless them! Fired by fundamental curiosity, the dame, by degrees, was emboldened to advance. All over was it, with him, then? It looked as though his Eminence was far beyond Rome already. She remained a short while lost in mingled conjecture. It was certain no morning bell would wake him. Now that the ache of life, with its fevers, passions, doubts, its routine, vulgarity, and boredom, was over, his serene, unclouded face was a marvelment to behold. Very great distinction and sweetness was visible there, together with much nobility, and love, all magnified and commingled. Through the triple windows of the chancel the sky was clear and blue—a blue like the blue of lupins. Above him stirred the wind-blown banners in the Nave. These restrictions apply only if 1 you make a change in the ebook other than alteration for different display devices , or 2 you are making commercial use of the ebook. If either of these conditions applies, please check gutenberg. This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. 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