LOS CARAQUEÑOS BEING THE LIFE HISTORY OF DON SEBASTIAN MARQUES DEL TORRE AND OF DOLORES, HIS WIFE, CONDESA DE LUNA

I.

Paganism was the avowal of life; Christianity the sacrifice of it. So the world civilized has always separated at the two diverging roads, according as brain or blood has ruled their lives; the Turanian races, and after them the Latins, to assert life; the Semitic races, and after them the Teutons, to deny it. So the Church of Rome, as nearest in time to Paganism, has been nearer the avowal of life, has recognized, through all its inquisitions, human hearts; the Sects have sought to stifle them; the Puritans have posed to ignore them. Thus cruelty may be the crime of priests; hypocrisy has been the vice of preachers.

Hence my poor friend Tetherby, spinning his affections from his brain, tired with a mesh of head-wrought duties, died, or rather ceased to live, of a moral heart-failure. His heart was too good to be made out of brains alone; and his life was ended with the loss of that girl of his—what was her name, Myra, Marcia?—born, in the Northland, of a warmer blood, who fell a victim there, as the rose-tree does in too cold a climate, to the creeping things of earth. Now it happened that that same year I was told the story of Dolores, Marquesa del Torre y Luna, almost the last of the old Spanish nobility of Carácas, called la doña sola de la casa del Rey—as we should say, the lonely lady of the house of the King—for she lived there, married and widow, fifty years, and left no child to inherit the thick-walled city house, four square about its garden, and the provinces of coffee-trees, and, what she prized more and we prize less, the noble blood of Torre and of Luna, now run dry.

There are two things in the little city of Carácas that go back to the time when the Spanish empire made a simulacrum of the Roman round the world—one is the great round-arched Spanish bridge, spanning the deep arroyo on the mountain slope above the present town—useless now, for the earthquake clefts are deeper on either side than this gorge of the ancient river of the city, and have drained its stream away—and the other this great stone fortress in the centre of the present town, with walls eight feet thick, its windows like tunnels cut through to the iron unglazed casement—for this was the only house that was left standing on the evening of the great earthquake; and so the modern city clusters timidly about it, its houses a modest one- or double-story, and, on the clay slope where the older city was, the cactus grows, and the zenith sun burns the clay banks red, and the old “gold-dust road,” over the Cordillera to the sea, now but a mule-path of scattered cobble-stone, winds lonely and narrow across the splendid bridge, among the great fissures that the earthquake left. And both bridge and house still bear the sculptured blazonry, the lions and the castles, and the pious inscription to the greater glory of the Virgin.

Carácas lies in a plain, like the Vega of Granada, only green with palms as well as poplars; but through its rich meadows a turbid mountain torrent runs, and south, and west, and east are mountains; and north the mighty Silla lifts almost to the snows, half breaking the ceaseless east wind of the sea; trade-wind, it has been called in history; slave-wind were better. And by the little city is the palm-clad Calvareo, the little hill gay with orchids and shaded by tree-ferns, in whose pleasant paths the city people still take their pleasure (for the name of Calvary but means the view, not any sadness), and took their pleasure, eighty years since, when this story begins. And one evening, in the early years of the century, there walked alone, or with but a nurse for her dueña, a girl whose beauty still smiles down through sad tradition and through evil story, to lighten the dark streets of the old Spanish town, whose stones for many years her feet have ceased to press. And the memory of the old Casa Rey, the castle, all is hers; and the people of the town, the Caraqueños, still see her lovely face at the window; first at one, and then at the other, but mostly at the grated window in the round tower of the corner, that projects and commands the two streets; for there her sweet, pale face used to show itself, between the bars, and watch for the cavalry her noble husband led, returning from the wars. For then were wars of liberation, when freedom was fought for, not possession and estates; and the Marquis Sebastian Ruy del Torre led in all. And days and days she would watch for him returning, after battles won, she sitting with her golden needle-work at the corner window, her night-black hair against the iron bar (for there are no glass window-panes in Carácas), her strange blue eyes still watching down the street. So she sat there, and broidered chasuble or altar-cloth for the holy church of Santa Maria de las Mercedes, where she prayed each dawn and evening, yet cast her eyes down either street between each stitch, to watch the coming of him she loved on earth. And the people of Carácas used to gather her glances to their hearts, like blue flowers, for of herself they saw no more than this.

But her husband, from their wedding-day, never saw her more. For fifty years she sat at this window, working chasuble and stole, and always, when the distant trumpet sounded, or the first gold-and-scarlet pennon fluttered far down the street, she would drop her work and rise. And then she would wave her hand, and her husband would wave his hand, at the head of his column far away. This was for the populace. But then she would go from the window; and be seen there no more while he stayed at Carácas.... But those that were beneath the window used to say (for the husband was too far off then to see) that before she left the window, she would cast a long look down the street to that distance where he rode, and those that saw this glance say that for sweetness no eye of mortal saw its equal, and the story is, it made little children smile, and turned old bad men good, and even women loved her face.

Then she vanished from the tower, and they saw her no more. During all the time that might be the Marquis’s stay, no more she came to the window, no more to the door. State dinners were given there in the King’s house; banquets, aye, and balls, where all that was Castilian in Carácas came; but the custom was well known, and no one marvelled that the châtelaine came not to meet them; the lovely Lady Dolores, whom no one ever spoke to or saw. Some dueña, some relation, some young niece or noble lady, cousin of either the del Torre, was there and did the honors. And of the Marquesa no one ever spoke, for it was understood that, though not in a convent, she was no longer in the world—even to her husband, it was said, at first with bated breath, then openly.

For the servants told, and the family, and it was no secret, how days and weeks before her lord returned the lady would busy herself with preparations. And their state suite of rooms, and their nuptial-chamber (into which, alas! she else had never come!) were prepared by her, and made bright and joyous with rich flowers, and sweet to his heart by the knowledge of her presence, and the touch of her dear hand. Then, when all was done, and one white rose from her bosom in a single vase (and in a score of years this white rose never failed), she darkened the rooms and left them for his coming, and went back to her seat in the stone-floored tower room, and sat there with her gold and silver embroidery, and so watched for him. And while he stayed in his palace, she lived in those cold, bare rooms; for they alone had not been changed when they were married, but had been kept as they had been a prison, and my lady Dolores loved them best; but she came not now to the window, lest their eyes might meet.

II.

So fifty years she lived there; and that is why the old Spaniard of Carácas still points out the house, and young men and maidens like to make their trysting-places of its gardens, which are public and where the band plays evenings—if that can be called trysting to our northern notions, which is but a stolen mutual glance in passing. But hearts are warm in Catholic Spain, and they dare not more; right hard they throb and burn for just so much as this—aye, and break for the lack of it. I say, fifty years—fifty years she lived there, but forty she lived alone, for at the end of ten years he died; and the manner of her living and his dying is what I have to tell.

But after that still forty years she lived on alone. Now she no longer worked at the window, and she came there but rarely. It seemed she came there for compassion, that the people, whom she felt so loving, might see her smile. For her smile was sweet as ever, only now it bore the peace of heaven, not the yearning love of earth. Yet never went she out her doors. And when she died—it is only some years since—they buried her upon Good Friday, and she sleeps in her own church, beneath the great gold shrine she loved and wrought for, of Mary, Mother of the Pities. And all the people of the city saw her funeral; and there is, in the church, a picture of the Virgin, that is really her, painted by a dying artist that had seen her face at the window many years before.

And did they not, the Caraqueños, wonder and ask the cause of this?—What was it?—They do not know—But did they not ask the story of the lonely lady, so well known to them?—They asked many years since; but soon gave over; partly that the secret was impenetrable, partly for love of her. For they had, the poorest peasant of them, that quick sympathy to stanch heart’s wounds that all the conventions of the strenuous North must lack. God gives in all things compensation; and even sins, that are not mean or selfish, have their half atoning virtues. Their silence was soothing to her sorrow; they never knew. But the priest?—The Church of Rome is cruel, but it keeps its secrets. And only it and Heaven know if their lives were one long agony of misguidance, as many lives must be on earth—perhaps sometimes the priest-confessor may help in such affairs; if so, God speed the Jesuits. But one thing is sure: in all their lives, after their marriage, they never met. She died old, in gentle silence; he still young, upon a bloody field; and now their eyes at last met in Heaven, “her soul he knows not from her body, nor his love from God.”

And we may, harmless, venture to tell what the people of Carácas say—with reverent memory, and loving glances at the old stone house; the hearts that inhabited it are cold; but its Spanish arms above the door still last, clear-cut as on the day the pride of this world’s life first bade the owner place them there.

III.

In the Calvareo that evening the Doña Dolores walked alone, with only old Jacinta, the black nurse; black she was called, but her hair alone was black—blue-black; her face was of that fiery brown that marks the Venezuelan Indian; she was not fat, as most nurses, but stood erect, with fierce lurid eyes, her hair in two tight braids, and was following and watching her gentle charge. Jacinta had things to do in our story; her race has nothing of the merry sloth, the gross animality of the negro; what things Jacinta found to do, were done. She was scarce a dozen years older than her mistress, and her form was still as lithe, her step as firm and quick as that of that boy of hers, now twelve, in the military school, training under the soutane’d Jesuits for the service of the Church—or Bolivar. And in the Calvareo also that evening were two men—nephew and uncle, both cousins of Dolores—and not, of course, walking with her or speaking to her, save by reverent bows; and, on the nephew’s part at least, by looks of fire. Yet the uncle might, perhaps, have walked with her, even in Carácas; for he, whom men called the General, despite his prouder titles, was not her cousin only, but her guardian.

Dolores and her maid have traversed the spiral path to the summit of the little hill; there is a little pool and fountain that the Moors, generations back, had taught these people’s ancestors to build; and from a bench among the orchids and the jasmine, and the charming amaryllis lily, standing sentry by her, like a band of spearmen, sees Dolores the lovely valley, purple in the first shadows of the short tropic day, and, on the southern mountain, the white walls of the Archbishop’s new convent; to the north, and higher, the little mountain fort guarding the road to the coast, and, as she looks, it dips its colors to the sunset, which are the yellow and red—the blood and gold—of Spain, and the booming of its little cannon echoes down the valley and the Angelus replies. Then she turns, and touches tenderly (not plucks) a marvellous lonely flower that blooms beside her. It is the Eucharis Amazonica, the lily of the Amazon, but known to her only as the Flor del Espiritu santo—the flower of the Holy Ghost. One moment, it seems that she will be disturbed. The younger man has left the older on his walk—for they are not always together, and gossip has made him suitor for his cousin’s hand, and he stands a moment watching her, behind a group of tree-ferns. No lovelier a girl had surely even his eyes ever rested on, as she sat there stilly, though her wonderful eyes were lost to him, following the sunset. And she was the greatest heiress in all the Spanish Main.

He might have stepped forward, into the open, to her, and no one but Jacinta would have known. Perhaps he was about to do so; but suddenly there appeared, on the hilltop beside them, a tall figure dressed in a purple gown, with hood and trimmings of bright scarlet, looking like a fuchsia flower; on his head was a little black velvet covering shaped half like a crown. It was the young Jesuit, the Archbishop of the Guianas. Dolores rose and kissed his hand, bending the knee respectfully; he sat down beside her.

IV.

The Condesa de Luna, the orphan daughter of dead parents who represented both branches of a famous old Gothic family, already known about the capital for her beauty, was known far and wide as the richest heiress in all Venezuela and Guiana; her prairies stretched from the ocean to the Apure, her herds so countless that they roamed wild upon pampas which were hers, hunted by peons who were hers. The old stone castle with the Spanish arms was hers, and another like it stood empty for her in far Madrid. Her guardian, the Marquis del Torre, was a poor man beside her; and his nephew, Don Ramon, poorer still.

Dolores was brought up as follows: At five she rose, and went, with Jacinta, to early mass—nearly always to a different church, as is the seemly custom in Carácas, lest young men should take advantage of it and take position behind the chairs of their adored ones in church, where they could not be repelled; for, of course, no young gentleman, however madly in love, would insult his lady by accosting her in the open street. After mass, at six, being the time of sunrise and by comparison safe, Jacinta would take her charge for a walk, usually on the Calvareo, then deserted. At seven they would be home, and then in the great court-yard, under the palms and rose-red orchids, Dolores would take her lessons—French, English, music—all from priests. At eleven, bath; at twelve, breakfast; then reading, perhaps a siesta in a hammock made of birds’ plumage. So she passed her days, all in the half-light of the great court-yard; only toward sunset again would she see the open sky, driving with one of her two governesses in the state carriage down the broad valley to where the wheel road stopped, and back again; or more rarely, as on this night, venturing on another walk. And all the youth of Carácas would gaze after her carriage; the young men driving out too, by themselves, in carriages, who had passed their days more in gambling or cock-fighting than with books and music; never, indeed, at mass. For here the lords of creation vent their authority in ordaining their wives and sisters to the Church and goodness, themselves to evil. But the most hardened duellist among them could no more than look at Dolores; only her reckless cousin Ramon would venture to ride athwart her carriage, and presume upon his cousinship to bow.

Yet intercourse is possible always betwixt young people who seek each other out; and all Carácas gave Ramon to her for her suitor. And to-night even, as he stood and glowered at the Archbishop from behind the tree-ferns, he had another chance. For there is, and was, one more strange custom in this strange city; at the sunset hour the young ladies of Carácas, all in their gayest dresses, sit in the great open windows and look upon the street—a curious sight it is to see the bright eyes and white throats thrust, like birds from a cage, through the iron bars of the sombre stone windows. (For no wind or cold ever needs a window of glass in that perpetual perfect weather; the high sun never makes a shutter needful in the narrow streets.) And there they sit, unoccupied; and the young men of the city, dressed also in their best, walk by as slowly, and look as lingeringly, as they dare; and perhaps, if the dark shadow of mamma or the dueña does not come out too quickly from the inner room, a few quick words are spoken, and a flower left or given. And what says the old proverb of the Caraqueños?

“Better two words in secret than a thousand openly.”

Sebastian Ruy, Marques del Torre, too, was bred as a young nobleman of oldest lineage should be, or should have been, in that early eighteenth century that still lingered then in the Andes. But this took him to Madrid and to Paris in the years VII. and VIII.; and the eighteenth century, as one knows, ended in those wee small numbers. Torre came back to plunge his country in a revolution which lasted intermittently, like one of its own volcanoes, for more than twenty years. The young Parisian étudiant began his first émeute in Carácas itself, with a barricade after the orthodox fashion of the years I. and II. This being quickly suppressed—partly that there were no pavements, and partly that each house was an impregnable fortress—but mostly that the city was of the governing class and stood with Spain—Torre had had to leave the capital for the pampas, where, for over twelve years, he maintained discursive warfare with a changeable command of Indians and peons, which, however, on the whole, increased in numbers, officered by a few young gentlemen, under himself. His marquisate he forgot, and sought to make others forget it. He was, throughout Venezuela, The General. He had never been back within the walls of Carácas; and, at nearly forty, he learned of his only aunt’s death following his uncle’s, and of the little girl they left, and of his guardianship.

A little girl she appeared to his imagination on the pampas; when he got to Carácas, she was a young woman. The General’s locks were already grizzled and his face weather-beaten with ten years’ open life on the plains; his face was marked, close beside the eye, with the scar of a sabre. He had one interview with Dolores, saw her nurse, her instructors, her father confessor; heard stories about his nephew Don Ramon, which troubled him, went back to camp.

Then intervened a brief campaign in the mountains of the Isla Margarita; Torre went there to take command. This is the famed old island of pearls; they lie there in the reefs amid the bones of men and ships. Torre found no pearls, but he defeated the royal troops in the first engagement resembling an open battle he had ventured fight. This matter settled, he lay awake at night, and thought about his new ward. Further tidings reached him from Carácas, of his nephew. It was said young Ramon boasted he would marry her. Then the King, as is the royal way after defeat in battle, made further concessions to the “Liberals,” as the revolutionists were called; and in the coaxing amity of the time, Torre was permitted, nay, invited, to return to the capital. He did so, and was immediately tendered a banquet by the royal Governor, and a ball at which his ward was present. The royal Governor and his lady sat beneath a pavilion, webbed of the scarlet and gold of Spain. The Countess Dolores came and curtsied deeply to them; then she rose the taller for it, and as she turned haughtily away they saw that she was almost robed in pearls; three strands about her neck and six about her waist; and the ribbon in her mantilla was pale green, white, and red. El Gobernador only smiled at this, the liberal tricolor, and made a pretty speech about it; but the vice-regal lady made some ill-natured reference to the pearls, as spoils from Margarita. Don Ramon was standing by and heard it. The General saw it not.

After the formal dance the General went up to compliment his ward. This was the first time he had seen her since his return; for even he could not call save in the presence of the family; and she had no other family than himself. He could not call on her until—unless—he married her. He said, “I am glad my lady Countess is kinder to our colors than my nephew.” He watched her as he said this; she started, and at the end of the sentence blushed. He saw her blush. Then he bowed, as if to retire.

“The pearls,” she said, hastily, “are all I have; see!” And the Marquis, bowing, saw that the neck-strands were not a necklace, but after passing thrice around her neck, descended to be lost in the laces of her dress.

The Marquis ended his bow, and went back to camp. Next week there came an Indian soldier to Dolores with a box of island pearls; they were large as grapeshot, and went thrice about her waist. But the General no longer contradicted her engagement to his nephew.

V.

The General had never known women; he had only known what men (and women, too) say of women. At Paris, and Madrid, he had seen his friends see dancers, figurantes; he did not confound other women with these, but he had known none other. Of girls, in particular, he was ignorant. A man of Latin race never sees a girl; in America, North America, it is different, and one sometimes wonders if we justify it.

Some weeks after the General got back to his camp (which was high up amid the huge mountain, the first mainland that Columbus saw, which fends the Gulf of Paria from the sea), he was astounded by the appearance of no less a person than his nephew Ramon. He had broken with the royal cause, he said, and come to seek service beneath his uncle. He did not say what statement he had left behind him in Carácas—no explanation was necessary in the then Venezuela for joining any war—but how he had justified his delaying his coming nuptials with Dolores. For he loved her, this young fellow; yet he said—allowed it to be said—that in the process de se ranger, in the process of arrangement, for his bride, that she might find her place unoccupied, certain other arrangements had been necessary which took time.

He did not tell this story to his uncle, who took him and sought to make a soldier of him. Not this story; but he told him that he loved Dolores; and his uncle—was he not twenty years younger?—believed him. Twenty years, or fifteen; ’tis little difference when you pass the decade.

But the General found him hard material to work up. He was ready enough at a private brawl; ready enough, if the humor struck him, to go at the enemy; but not to lead his men there. And his men were readier to gamble with him than to follow him; though brave enough, in a way.

Yet the General Marquis blinded his faults—aye, and paid his debts—for when he lost at “pharaon” a certain pearl he wore, the uncle bought it back for him, with a caution to risk his money, not his honor; at which the young captain grit his teeth, and would have challenged any but a creditor. And when a certain girl, a Spanish woman, followed him to camp, del Torre knew of it, and helped Ramon to bid her go; and if the General thought the worse of him, he did not think Dolores loved him less; for was not Sebastian himself brought up on that cruel half-truth that some women still do their sex the harm to make a whole one? that women love a rake reformed. Then came a battle, and both were wounded, and more concessions from his Catholic Majesty; and in their wake the wounded gentlemen went back to Carácas.

The General’s hair was grayer, and in that stay again he saw Dolores only once, and that was in church. At mass, high mass, Te Deum, for the Catholic Majesty’s concessions, Don Ramon stood behind her chair; and del Torre saw them from a pillar opposite, and again the girl countess blushed. And after mass the new Archbishop met him in the street and talked—of him, and of his ward, and of Don Ramon.

“He is a graceless reprobate,” said this peon-priest.

The Marquis sighed. “A soldier—for a brave man there is always hope.”

The Archbishop eyed him.

“She loves him?”

“She loves him.”

“He is poor!”

“She is rich.”

“You should marry her,” said the Archbishop, and shrugged his shoulders.

A week after he met them all again; and this was that evening in the garden.

VI.

Now, this arch-priest had been a peon, and a soldier in del Torre’s army; and then he had left it, and had seen the viceroy and been traitor to the rebels, and so became a priest; and then, heaven and the vice-queen knew how, bishop; and but that his archiepiscopal credentials were now fresh from Rome, del Torre, still a Catholic, had called him traitor! Del Torre could not like the man, though he stood between him and God; and he knew that disliking must be mutual; and he marvelled, simple soldier! that the intoxicating message came from him. But he put this cup of heaven from his lips.

For del Torre, from his fierce August of war, had learned to love this April maiden with all his heart, and with all his life and his strong soul. Were not his hairs gray, and his face so worn and weather-beaten? And his heart—he had none fit for this lady of the light. Enough that it was his pearls that clasped her slender waist.

The Archbishop, too, had seen his gray hairs; yet he thought that it was best? He had said so. Perhaps he wanted her possessions for the Church. His nephew Don Ramon cursed the Archbishop for sitting there that night, and saying to her—what? Novitiate and convent, perhaps, or his own sins. For the lady Dolores was devout as only girls can be who have warm hearts and noble souls, and are brought up in cloisters.

Del Torre stood on the other side of the Calvary hill, where the sunset lay, and looked at it, dimly—for his heart was breaking; the Archbishop kept close his converse with Dolores; perhaps he saw her fiery younger lover lurking in the branches. She rose—she and Jacinta—and the priest walked home with them. He talked to her of nephew Ramon and his crimes—not his sins with women, for the priest, too, was a crafty man, and did her sex no honor—but of his gambling, his brawling, his unsaintliness. He said Ramon was a coward; and when Dolores’ pale cheek reddened, he marked it again; and when she broke at this, he told her a trumped-up story of his last battle under his grave uncle. For Dolores, noble maiden, had not yet confessed her life’s love to herself—how then to her confessor?

The Archbishop walked slowly home with her, Jacinta just behind, and left her under that old stone scutcheon on the door. Del Torre and Don Ramon lingered behind; and when they had passed her window, she was sitting there, looking weary. The old General passed by, sweeping off his hat, his eyes on the ground. He had been talking to the youth of all the duties of his life and love; but Ramon was inattentive, watching for her. As they passed her window Ramon lingered, daring a word to Dolores through the iron bars. He asked her for a rose she wore. She looked at him a moment, then gave it to him, with a message. The Marquis saw her give the rose; he did not hear the message. Don Ramon did; and his face turned the color of a winter leaf. As he walked on, he crushed the rose, then threw it in the gutter. For the girl, womanlike, had told the rival first.

That night Ramon intoxicated himself in some tavern brawl. He had a companion with him, not of his own sex; and when another officer reproached him with it, for his cousin, he swore that he would marry her, and that she had been—— Then they fought a duel, and both were wounded.

VII.

The General heard of it the next morning, and it was even the Archbishop brought him the news. The priest besought del Torre to marry his ward, but he was obdurate; the crafty priest wrestled with the soldier’s will all through that day, and neither conquered. But the General’s face looked worn; he argued, only sadly, of the hot blood of youth, of the hope in her love for the nephew, and of his bravery. Then late in the day came the young officer, wounded, the bandage on his breast half stanching the heart’s blood he had shed for her, and besought the general not to give her to Don Ramon. Del Torre stood as if at bay. “You love her too?” he cried.

“Ay, and would save her,” said the young man, faintly.

“You must protect her from this libertine,” then said the priest. For he wished her to marry the one he thought she loved not.

“She loves him!” sighed the General.

“You must save her——”

“I will live with her, and guard her as my own——”

“You may not,” said the priest.

“I am her guardian——”

“You may not—you must marry her.”

“I am old and she is young——”

“The holy Church demands it!”

“I love her not—I——” the lie stuck in his lips.

Late in the afternoon del Torre went to see Dolores. She was at vesper service, and he waited until she came back, pale. He began to speak. “I have heard all,” she interrupted; “Jacinta told me.” And again he saw her blush.

Del Torre groaned; he turned aside. Then he strode back to her, his sabre clanking as he walked. “God forgive me if I err. Dolores, you may not marry this man—you—you must—Señorita Condesa, will you marry me?”

Dolores looked up; she had been red, she was now pale. So blushes lie.

“Santissima Maria,” she said, below her breath.

“The Church—the Archbishop—demand it,” del Torre hurried on, not looking at her, for he heard her exclamation. “I love you—well enough—to wed you.” The soldier’s voice broke, too feeble now to cry a charge. He never saw her look at him. God pardon him for looking down.

“You love me—well enough to wed me——” She had turned red again, and her voice was low. He looked, and saw it.

“I will keep you, and watch over you, Dolores, with my life. The Church demands it—I am but a soldier—will you marry me?”

Her dark head was bowed, and the purple of her eyes he saw not.

“Yes,” she said; but, oh, so gravely, so coldly!

He bowed ceremoniously, and touched her hand to his lips; then he turned and left the stone-walled tropic garden. And as his sabre clanked in the passage-way, she threw herself on the hammock in a flood of tears.

And that is how they were affianced.

VIII.

The love of a man for a girl is perhaps different from any other passion our souls on earth are tempered with. Daphnis and Chloe are pretty, natural, charming to paint and write vers de société about; but so simple as to be shallow, so natural as to be replaceable. To Daphnis, we know that any other Chloe will be Chloe too. And they are in reality selfish; they seek the consummation of their wishes: he his, she hers. It may be the same human energy; but in the fierce, almost blasphemous, self-abnegation of the man’s love, it seems as different a manifestation as the earth-rending power of freezing water from the swelling of a bud at spring. The man can renounce his love; but he desires her well-being with a will to which murder is an incident and the will divine but an obstacle to be overcome.

The Archbishop had told del Torre that his nephew had been married already—secretly, but married—married to the woman who came to seek him out at the camp. Against this wall del Torre’s will had been beating in vain before his own betrothal to Dolores was announced. If she could not marry Ramon, it might, indeed, be best she married him. But it was with a fierce suspicion he received his friends’ congratulations at his club and camp. Among his officers no other look or accent mingled with an unaffected joy. But in the city, he fancied—he was ever ready to fancy—among the young men, a shade of irony in their congratulations on his happiness. Was he not so old!

Don Ramon heard of it from Jacinta. Jacinta was on the side of the younger man. She looked upon del Torre’s gray hairs with fierce eyes. Ramon’s liquid voice and peachy lip had fascinated this supple creature of the forest. Don Ramon heard; and his own answer was characteristic.

“The old fool!”

Jacinta nodded impatiently. She asked him for a message back. He took pen and paper and wrote:

“Señorita Condesa: Thou lovest me. On the morning thou shalt wed Don Sebastian I kill him.

“Ramon del Torre.”

He read it over; then he stopped and thought. His first impulse was to boast; his second, to intrigue. He was not all tiger; something of the serpent lay within the handsome youth.

“I will send it this evening,” he said to Jacinta. And in the evening this is what he wrote:

“Señorita Condesa: The Archbishop is my enemy and makes my uncle marry you. Have you confessed to him? Surely, you have loved me? On the day he marries you he shall kill your

“Ramon.”

This letter he sent. So he played upon the poor girl’s conscience, that as a child she had given him a smile; and bragged even to her that he had had her heart. This was Thursday, March 19, 1812. The marriage was set for the 26th. Ramon went to the club, the café which served as club to the aristocracy of Carácas, and announced publicly that his uncle was forcing his ward to marry him against his will. The General, when this story was brought to him, winced, but only replied: “My nephew knows I cannot fight him; I must leave my honor to the kind opinion of my friends.” This speech was repeated—“to the kindness of my friends;” and that night a dozen young gentlemen called upon the marquis and asked to be permitted to provoke Don Ramon. The General refused it to all, with one wave of his hand. “I marry my ward for family reasons; my nephew must be permitted to make what criticism he chooses.”

Don Ramon then announced his uncle a coward, and promised to prevent the marriage by force. Del Torre took no notice. Jacinta had taken the letter to Dolores, but Ramon got no reply. After his last threat, however, he received a call from a Jesuit priest, who was sent by the Archbishop and hinted of the Inquisition. Then the young man was silent for two days, and in devouring his rage he produced this letter to Dolores:

“Dolores: Hast thou confessed? And why no answer to me?

“For death (para la muerte),

“Ramon.”

To this Jacinta brought back a line:

“I shall confess upon my wedding-day. My answer to my husband, with the message that your Honour” (V., only, in Spanish) “did not give.

“Dolores, Condesa de Luna.”

For Ramon had never given the message that went with the rose.

All this was in Holy Week. Palm Sunday passed; the Wednesday came; Holy Thursday was the day fixed for the wedding—by the Archbishop’s special will.

Now, it must be remembered that in all this time del Torre had spoken with Dolores face to face three times, and three times only. Each time he had seen her he had mentioned his nephew’s name, and each time she had changed color. He would have married her to Don Ramon could he have done so; even now he had dared but for Ramon’s own conduct. But all this time del Torre was in an agony of doubt, through which even Ramon’s insults could not penetrate. He would have sent Dolores to a convent, but the archbishop forbade it; the priest feared not Don Ramon against Don Sebastian; perhaps, however, he feared him at the convent doors. But all this time del Torre had seen Dolores twice a day, at mass, where he went and gazed upon her, dim through incense.

IX.

On Wednesday morning the Marquis del Torre had a last interview with his bride. She was to go to her last maidenly confession on that day; and he called early in the morning, in his uniform as General of the Liberal army. When he came upon her she was all in white and girt about with pearls. Pearls were in her dark hair, pearls in the folds of her white dress, pearls in her neck, no other color about her save the magic amethystine in her eyes. Her face was pale.

Del Torre bowed over her hand, then stood beside her. After the greeting, he said:

“Señorita Dolores, I am still your guardian—I would only marry you to make you happy. Do you think I can?” His lips were paler than hers, and his voice sounded cold. She only answered:

“Quite sure, señor.”

“And the rose I saw you give my nephew—is it dead?”

Again the rush of color to her face; but, after a start, she answered, “It is dead.” She stammered slightly, trying to say more; to relieve her embarrassment he rose and left her. “Hasta mañaña!”

“Mañaña por la mañaña,” she answered, forcing brightness in her voice. The marquis went out into the sunlight; he felt his heart as cold as hers.

But again Dolores burst into tears; then, quickly drying them, she wrote a letter and sealed it. Then she called Jacinta.

The Indian nurse came quickly, and as she stood looking at Dolores a dog’s love was in her eyes. “This letter—the marquis must have it in the morning,” said the countess.

“He shall have it—in the morning,” answered Jacinta. Then Dolores went to her confessor. And Jacinta could not read the letter; so she took it to Don Ramon first, and asked him what it was. And it was Don Ramon read it, Jacinta looking on.

Then Ramon girt his sword about him, and went to mass.

X.

The soldiers in Carácas march to mass and the service is performed at beat of drum. At the muffled tap of a march the regiment files in to fill the nave, and kneels, ringing their bayonets upon the stones; the people fill the sides, and stand behind the columns on the aisles. The General was there, as usual, but he could not see Dolores; she was kneeling at a shrine upon one side, a shrine of Mary, Mother of Pity. All the pictures and gold images were heavily draped in crape, for it was Holy Week. The brazen trumpets of the military band sounded through the Kyrie Eleison; the church was dark, for every woman was in black until Good Friday, and the crape hangings shrouded close the walls. Del Torre stood erect in his green uniform, but, save for his figure, the nave was a mass of red and gold and glittering steel. He looked for her; he looked back to the doors which were thrown back inward; from the dark, shrouded church he looked through into the empty square, blazing with the zenith sun of the equinox. Again a muffled drumbeat, and the regiment knelt, with a rattle of their bayonets, upon the stones; it was the elevation of the host, and he, too, knelt and crossed himself.

When mass was over, the soldiers filed out first; as del Torre followed, he met the wounded captain again, with bloodless cheeks. “You are too pale to be out, sir,” said the General, almost lovingly, his hand resting lightly on the other’s shoulder.

“Don Ramon is outside,” he answered.

“I have no fear—the youth is mad,” said del Torre.

It is the custom in Spanish America, now forgotten in old Spain, to lead the holy images of the church about the streets, with a slow processional, before Good Friday. As del Torre spoke, they found themselves behind one of these. In this Church of Santa Teresia is a famed old image of Christ bearing the Cross, brought two centuries before from Spain. It is especially venerated by the merchants of Carácas; large sums are subscribed by them each Easter time to dress it up, thousands of dollars and doubloons. Behind this image now they found themselves. Eight chanting priests, in mourning black and lilac, bore it on either side, but the image was gay with beaten gold, borne in a canopy of costly lace, a hundred tall wax candles giving light. The priests move very slowly, scarce a step a minute, making stations at each shrine, so that to bear these images from one church to another may take half a day. Del Torre and the wounded officer could not, of course, pass it; so that it was half an hour when they reached the open air, and the square nearly emptied of the worshippers; del Torre heard the distant band of the army down the mountain slope.

As they came out into the heat, he felt a slight shudder, like a quiver of the earth, and thought it was the shock of seeing his nephew. Don Ramon del Torre spoke loudly, disregarding the presence of the bystanders, pressing rudely by the sacred shrine, and crying that the old man would not fight.

“There stands the old man that will wed my cousin.”

“Mention not her name,” said General del Torre——

“I would kill him first, but that his old blood dare not spill itself for her.”

“Mention not her name,” said del Torre——. Then Ramon’s voice hissed louder.

“My cousin Dolores de Luna that has been my mistress——”

That night a Jesuit priest, leaving the King’s House, where he had confessed Dolores, ran hastily to the Archbishop’s. While he was there, another frightened messenger brought the news that Don Sebastian and his nephew had been fighting on Calvareo. But Jacinta, crying, brought the news to the Countess earlier, how Don Sebastian and Don Ramon at last had met, and how the nephew lay full of wounds upon the Calvary, literally cut in pieces, killed at his own uncle’s hands.

XI.

Dolores spent the night before the wedding kneeling in the little chapel of her dwelling. So we read that Eastern Catholics “lay all that night in the form of a cross.” She was praying for her husband that had been to be—perhaps praying that he might be still, praying for light to see if there were sin in it. Perhaps she had remorses of her own. She had known the dead man he had killed as a boy, bold, reckless, wild; I suppose she had looked at him once or twice. A Southern maiden’s glances return to torture her when they have led to blood; prudent maids of other climes are chary of them for tradition of some such reason.

Dolores never wept, but knelt there, dry-eyed, praying. In intervals she thought, “Would he be well enough to come?” as she knew that he was gravely wounded; but somehow she felt sure he would; and that if this marriage-bond were sin, he would venture it for her sake. A woman’s conscience rules her heart, even in Spain; but a man, even Roman Catholic, will risk his own perdition to save her sorrow, or that no sin be hers. She must save him, she must be the judge. And sunrise found her pale but decided. Then she called Jacinta to her side, and asked her if she had carried to her husband (so she called him) her note.

Jacinta looked at her fiercely; but at the word “Husband,” started. Then she said she had torn it up.

At the Countess’s look she quailed, and lied again. She had it still, she said. Dolores bade her give it to him as he came from early mass.

Then Jacinta cried and told the truth. She admitted that she had given it to Don Ramon.

Dolores heard this with the blood about her heart, but sat there silent, while the Indian woman grovelled at her feet. It was her note, then, that caused the duel.

Then mine, too, is the sin, she thought, not his alone; and this thought gave her joy. But where was he? was he strong enough to come? She took her writing-case and wrote an exact copy of her other note; and this was what she had said, and Ramon had read, and then had fought his uncle:

“Señor: The rose you asked of yesterday I gave Don Ramon; but the message that went with it was given him for you.

“Maria Joespha Dolores, Condesa De Luna.”

As she finished writing, the General was announced. His face was bloodless, but his wounds had been carefully dressed, so that the bandages could not be seen. He knelt over her hand, though the kneeling set them bleeding once again. But Dolores, timid only in her love, still saw but remorse and duty in his eyes. With him he brought his own priest, a priest from the Liberal army. “Pobra,” he said, “we must be married early—early and privately.”

She sought his eyes timidly and tried to say it; to say what words her note said in her hand. But she could not. She could only say, “I know—I have heard,” and she clenched the letter closer in her hand. She could not give it to him.

Del Torre’s face could not turn whiter. But he said: “Forgive me—only your forgiveness I can ask. At noon, then?”

“At noon.” She saw him leave the house; then, then she turned and cried to Jacinta: “Run, run, and give him this letter—at the Cathedral.”

And again, upon her wedding-morning, Dolores went to pray. She was interrupted by a visit from the Archbishop. Some presentiment made her rise in apprehension; and as she stood erect, she saw, through the priest, the man. And she saw that he, too, had her secret; first the lover, then the priest, had found it out.

“This marriage must not be,” said he.

“Holy Father, I have confessed yesterday.”

“This marriage must not be. You loved Don Ramon.”

Dolores’s lips curled. “I confessed, yesterday. I see you have been told.”

“Yesterday ’twas a duty—to-day it is a sin. Thou lovest Ramon.”

Then Dolores rose to her full height and her blue eyes flamed like ice. “Sebastian, the Liberador, him I love, in this life and the next; God knows it, and Ramon knows it, and now may you, and soon, please God, shall he!”

All forewarned that he was, the priest started at her vehemence. Fool that he had been!

“He has murdered his nephew—and thou art the cause.”

The Countess was silent. All Catholic that she was, she had resolved to appeal from his judgment to God’s.

“Thou wilt not obey?” said the priest.

Her lips half formed the word no.

“Then on thee and on him, on thy house I pronounce the curse of God. Thy family shall have cause to remember this day, this Holy Thursday, until it and both thy names shall have vanished from the earth.”

Scarcely had the Archbishop left the house when del Torre came. She saw that he had not been to church. But she was married to him without another word. “If he has not my note,” she thought, “he shall have it soon.”

But before that night Jacinta, with the note in her hand, was buried with ten thousand others behind the closed cathedral doors.

XII.

On this Thursday, March 26, 1812, while the services of the Hours of Agony were being celebrated in the great cathedral, in the presence of ten thousand people, the mountains trembled and the earth opened. The multitude pressed for the doors, but they opened inward, and the thronging masses pressed them fast. At the second shock the walls opened and the roof fell in. The Archbishop and many priests were buried at the altar. Thirty thousand people are said to have perished. Many were swallowed in the chasm that opened on the mountain-side, like rents in a bulging sail bursted in a gale. No stone houses in Carácas more than one-story high were standing on that night—except the old Spanish castle where, in the tower-room, Dolores sat watching for her husband.

Through all that night del Torre worked amid the ruins. At dawn he was brought home insensible, fainting from his labors, bleeding at his opened wounds. Dolores met him at the door, and led the bearers to the room that should have been their bridal-room. There he was laid, and lay delirious many weeks with fever. Dolores never left his side.

The Archbishop was known to have been killed. Jacinta, the bride knew, must have perished too. The priest that had married them stayed with her; but Dolores, though brave enough to sin, was not false to her faith. The over-wrought heart of the poor girl and great noblewoman connected all that had happened with what she deemed her sins—firstly, that she had caused her cousin’s death, her husband’s crime, but chiefly that she had braved the Church, and the curse its head, now dead, had launched upon her and upon Carácas. That their house alone was standing seemed only to mark them guilty.

Dolores was a noble heart, and did not falter in her course. She had followed love, she had married him she loved; his wife she was, his wife she would remain. But she sought no soothing palliation from the friendly priest. She went to no confession; in all her life she never would confess herself, seek absolution again. Excommunicated she would live, that the curse might rest on her and not on him.

But ah, how ardently she watched for Sebastian’s consciousness to come! for his eyes to rest on hers again! She felt sure the coldness in them now was gone. Delirious, he raved of her and of his love; he that never called her but by titles in his life, now cried Dolores, Dolores, and she held his hand and waited.

She bade the doctors tell her when his recovery was likely to come. And then, when one evening his hands moved, and he closed his eyes and slept, she sat there trembling, not daring to be beside him, but her face turned away. That yearning cry—Dolores, Dolores, had been stilled for hours; but the night passed and still he was asleep. Then, when it was broad sunlight, she heard a sudden movement by the nurse, and the priest began to pray in Latin, and her heart stood still. He sat up; she retreated in the shadow, toward the door. His voice spoke; but oh! how low, how weak—not as it had been in his dreaming; alas! this was now his right mind. He saw not her; his eyes looked sanely out the window, through the crowded city. “It was a sin to marry her,” he said.

She was carried fainting to her room within the tower, and there again she waited. “Has he asked for me?” she ventured to ask, at night.

He had asked for my lady, and they told him she was ill. And the next day again; and they had told him she was in her suite about the tower. She dared not seek him now. And flowers came to her from him, but no further speech. Thrice he sent his homage to her. He could not walk yet, but he sent his homage to her. She asked to know when he could walk; and they told her they would let her know. So, one afternoon, they told her he might walk the next day; and all that night she passed in prayer.

The next day she waited for his step upon the stone floor. It came not; to her tears and prayers, it came not. Jacinta’s dead hand still held close the note. She prayed—was it wrong to pray when so unshrived?—to Maria Vergen de las Mercedes, but still it came not. Her haughty Spanish breeding forbade her showing sorrow to her servants, and they were cold and deferential to her. Jacinta? She was dead—Dolores knew, but thought that she had given him her letter. She had sinned, yes, but he was her husband.

The next day she asked the servant. The Señor General was gone. Gone? without seeing her even? He had had to go to the wars; he had not ventured to disturb my lady; he left a letter. A letter? she tore it open, read it. It sent his respectful worship to “the Marquesa;” it apologized for his illness; it prayed forgiveness from her for having married her; it was done to save her name. It said no word of love; and Sebastian Ruy del Torre was a gentleman: his love appeared not in his letter. If she loved him not, he would not wound her by showing his. It said no word of guilt. He would neither wound her by requiring love nor by suggesting blame; but to Dolores’s morbid fancy it had a sense of blame. It closed by speaking of his duty at the wars; of his country’s freedom; perhaps, a hint of hers. Dolores clasped the white paper to her breast, and, to immortal eyes its color was of blood. She read it once again; and del Torre, had he been there, could have seen her heart die in her eyes.

XIII.

We must remember that Maria Josepha Dolores, Condesa del Torre y Luna, was a lonely young girl, educated but from books, devoutedly believing in a faith we like to think superstitious. Remember, please, also, that she loved, and braved her Church for love, and had not, so she thought, won his. She deemed her soul was damned; she knew her heart was broken. Not that there were no days when she did dare hope; no days in which she tried to frame a theory by which it still might seem he cared for her; but she believed he was borne down by their great guilt. And she resolved his soul, at least, would not be lost for hers. “My lady Marquesa would have her apartments in all the house,” the letter said. “My lady had but to command. A small room in the tower was enough for him—he could but rarely be home from the wars. He trusted, if his presence was painful, she would not see him,” etc., etc. And, after many months, when the General came back—his wife met him not. The rooms of state were carefully prepared for him, and all his suite; flowers, banquets were ready; all his retinue and hers, in their joint blazonry, were in attendance. Only, strangely enough, just that little tower-room was the one my lady Marchioness preferred. Would he kindly yield it to her?

Of course, and the General sent her a rope of pearls. They almost broke her resolution; but she met him not. The General only sighed; this was all as he had known. The evil nephew, done to death by his own hand, still had her heart. He sighed and his hair grew whiter. One rending memory came over him, of the last time he had seen her eyes.

He could not know, as he rode homeward up the street, after his first state visits, straining his eyes up to that tower-window frowning so blankly, how late her own had left it—those eyes of purple-gray that every beggar in Carácas soon knew well, save only he. Before the next return his glory blazed abroad, and Bolivar came back with him. Bolivar, the Liberator. All thoughtful preparation, all courtly care, all a Spanish grandee’s splendor was spread forth to receive him in the Casa Rey; but the châtelaine was never seen. It was not necessary to explain her absence; such things get quickly known; it was, of course, thought she had loved the cousin. And the strange Old-world Gothic pride made her bearing, the honor of the house, del Torre’s silence, only too easily intelligible to them. So the Marquis del Torre never saw his bride on his returning home.

But, had he known it, he never opened a door that she had not vanished through it. He never touched a flower she had not placed for him. He never looked in a mirror her gray eyes had not just left. He never touched a wine-glass to his lips that her lips had not kissed it. The very missal that he read from had been warmed within her bosom.

O, ghosts, and mediums, and vulgar spirits of air! and stupid tables, mirrors that are flattered with tales of second sight! Why did you not hold a look of hers one moment longer? why did not the roses keep a second longer her lips’ breath for him? Poor fables of visions in the air, that could not draw the image of her eyes to his as he rode up the street scarce a hundred mortal bodies’ breadths away! But they never did; he never saw her, she saw him only as he rode away upon his horse; and so for many—nay, not many (such poor slight power has heaven)—not for many, years. And as his horse bore him away, she came to the tower-window and watched him go—and there she sat weeks, months, until the pennons flashed or the trumpet’s note announced to her, waiting, that he was come again. For he always came in such guise, announced with ceremony. And he did not dream her eyes had been at the tower-window ever since. For their eyes never met.

But the people knew, and so they called her “Our Lady of the Tower.” And Nuestra Doña del Torre is she called there still. And thus they lived there alone within that great house, each for pity of the other in courage, each for awe of love in silence; each so loving, so brave, so silent, that the other never knew.

XIV.

“Nuestra Doña del Torre”—by that title, I fancy, she is known in heaven. For in that city all the good that was worked was hers; after the earthquake, then through siege and civil war, her heart directed her handmaidens, ladies loving her did her soft work. Her own life was but a gentle message. For she never but for the convent left her tower-room. Thither, however, poor old men, children, troubled girls, would come to see her.

All this time Bolivar was battling with the might of Spain, and del Torre (del Torre y Luna now he always called himself, liking, at least, to link his name with hers; but she had dropped her own name and called herself del Torre alone—Maria Dolores del Torre) was Bolivar’s captain. Years the war lasted. Once our General was captured in the city; he came to Carácas at a time of war, when it was legal for the Governor to capture him; he had heard some rumor that his wife was ill. He would have been shot but that he escaped from gaol, and this so easily that the prison doors seemed to turn of themselves. No youth, or woman, or child in all Carácas but would have turned a traitor for our lady.

Del Torre’s face looked old—Dolores knew it not. She never saw him—except, perhaps, a distant figure on a horse. When he was out, she roamed the house; when he came back she shut herself within her apartments. He never returned, from the shortest absences, a walk or a mass, without making formal announcement. He wondered only at the flowers; the perfections of his banquets, the splendor of his household, were for his guest and as it should be. At first del Torre had hoped to see at least a handkerchief fly from her window, a greeting or a wave of the hand, on his return. But it was always black and blank when he saw it. At first, this cost him tears: a greeting seemed so little—only courtesy! But afterward he only sighed; no man should repine that events fulfil his expectations rather than his hopes.

Their money grew apace. With part of hers Dolores built a church at Los Teques, a property that had been her mother’s, not far from the city. Half her time she spent there; and it stands there still, and is called after the Vergen de las Mercedes—Our Lady of Pity—to whom alone Dolores dared to pray. But the Church took her treasure and it kept her secret. Sometimes, in God’s providence, even pity is withheld.

One’s heart beats quick to think what might have happened had she ventured to confession—the priest who married them still was with her, in the household, an honest priest, who loved del Torre, too. But Rome, which knows how to be gentle as a mother, can also be as cruel as the grave. So Dolores went on in building churches, and Don Sebastian offered his brave heart wherever he saw a bullet fly for liberty. The best work of the world is done by broken hearts.

One time that he came home, he found a medallion by his plate. It was set with pearls, in tricolor enamel. He opened it, and it was a miniature of her. Then once a rush of human blood bore all his barriers of honor, duty, resolves of conduct, far away. He hastened through the house to the tower, where she lived. He hastened—crying Dolores, Dolores, as he had cried in his delirium. Her maid opened—not Jacinta, but Jacinta’s daughter, now a woman. My Lady Marquesa had gone to the convent at Los Teques for some weeks’ prayer.

XV.

After this, del Torre’s body grew broken, with his heart.

It was the last campaign of liberation. The final battle was fought not far from Los Teques, where the convent was; and the wall of the church of the Vergen de las Mercedes was scarred with balls. The fight was over, the country was free. And the General at last was killed.

Bolivar himself went with del Torre’s body to Carácas; our General’s corps d’armée were his pall-bearers. The news, of course, had been sent to the city; the Governor had fled; the General’s tri-color now, the red-white-green of Colombia, was floating over the Capitol. All the town was gay with banners, merry with song. It had forgotten the earthquake, and was now rebuilt, though lower down. The Casa Rey now stood at the head of the principal street, which sloped from it down the mountain side. And as the regiment escorting his body debouched into this avenue and turned upward (as its dead leader had so often done before), and the town came in view, there was a great hush upon the people. For lo! Now, at last, the window of the tower was wide open and the house bore all no black, but was festooned with laughing tri-color. And the window of the tower was open, and there within stood our Lady Dolores, in her white wedding laces, waving her hand.

She met them at the great door. Bolivar, and the officers who had been with our General, started. For, as she stood there in her slender satin gown, her eyes upon them, she was like a young girl. And her girlish waist was bound about with pearls.

The fact was, she was seven-and-twenty. They placed his bier first in the great room; but she would have it in hers, so in the tower-room they placed it, with burning candles standing sentry now where she had stood; and by its side were lilies—the flower of the Holy Ghost—and then they left her. Then first, since her wedding-day, she looked upon him, face to face, his eyes now dead to see. Their eyes so met. And outside, from the city now again joyous, came the carillon of freedom bells.

XVI.

This is the life story of Don Sebastian Ruy José Maria, Marques del Torre y Luna; and of Maria Josepha Dolores del Torre, Condesa de Luna, his wife; and of the old stone castle that alone the earthquake left standing in the pleasant city of Carácas.

The Holy Catholic Church had alone their secret; and she kept it; and now she has, laid up on earth, their treasure too. No longer such grim motives vex their country; if she battles with herself, it is for money or for acres of wide coffee land. Such cruel tales cannot be found there now. But, perhaps, withal, some touch of noble life is vanished, with that flag of blood and gold. Good cannot grow bravely without evil in this world.

You may see the Casa Rey still standing in the sombre street, and the empty tower window there. The Marquesa del Torre y Luna died, quite old, more than a score of years ago. Her blue eyes are no longer there. Perhaps they are in heaven, and now at last, “know not their love from God.” The people of Carácas think so. Her eyes