The Spanish dancer : being a translation from the original French by Henry L. Williams of Don Caesar de Bazan (4 page)

cesser! They say—^his grooms in waiting'—that he sleeps, when he does sleep, with one hand under the bolster!"

"To keep it on his crown, there?"

"You are a wag, father!"

'T never was in more earnest when I say that it is the queen who sleeps with her hand under her pillow, but it ought to be with the key of the secret postern under it!"

"Ho, ho! is she going to lend it to her new caprite, tliis wanderer, who is to be finished in music and made the female David to our Saul?"

"Tliat is the knot!"

"What, the gypsy!"

''Or the stiletto to loosen the knot!*'

"What knot?"

"The charm tying up our sovereign. The buzzinf goes that he is absorbed in some single passion! and the Lord deliver the realm from a ruler with but one fliought!"

"My amen to that! What is the: thought, my rev-iCfend ?"

The old priest let his cowl fall a little. He smoothed his smooth chin in its three folds and answered, with a merry twinkle of his small gray eyes:

''One that he does not share with his confessor!"

"Ask your brother, the queen's confessor, then! He will withhold nothing from you—you are Nicolaites m such matters—you hold everything in common."

"But this is not a common thought."

"Strange that it is not k-nown to—to the general!"

The .priest looked hard at the moble, and, accepting- k« true meaning, replied gravely:

"Tliat is the rub; the General of the Inquisition lias

made inquiries and learned notliing. The king's excursions are secret as the voyages of the Venetians!"

"Carlos has become silent?"

"Mo, the same garrulous one, but great speech goes with a little conscience!"

"Save us! Is it seeking the stone to turn all to gold?"

"Spain has the gold! The crumbling palace needs stones to repair it more than ingots."

"Would he be too fond of hunting? Does he contemplate making Andalusia a hunting forest? Would he revive hawking and waste level Teruel into one plain ?"

"He hunts and he hawks, but not game and bird of our known hide and feather ! Save us !"

"I dare not guess! He was 'the Wild Prince' in his youth, and what youth took on, age is used to! You think that when he slips out of the gateway in the south wall, he goes to meet "

"Certainly none comes to meet him, for we have watched!"

"Oh, if your lookouts, who are, I own, more valuable than mine, since mine work for filthy coin and yours for the heavenly pay—if your lookouts descry nothing, mine "

"Oh, if it be a worldly lure, your men will the sooner trace him to the decoy I"

"The decoy? No, Carlos is no follower of that ignis fatuiis, woman! I should have perceived that long since! Depend upon it, he confers with some philosopher who has the draught which renews life, which foretells how a dynasty ends, which gives the glib tongue to deceive a French envoy, and the strong fist to impress the doughty German!"

"My lord," said the other, seriously, "we have cott-^uded that the man who unravels this tangled skein may

have all our votes in case he aspires to be the prime matf of the kingdom."

Silently the noble's eyes expressed his content. He had reached the point when, himself overtasked, the friendly push would lift him w^here he could grasp the parapet and draw himself erect upon it.

"My good father," said he, still breathlessly, "I understand you. The motto is: 'Help you, and Heaven's ministers will help me!' "

"You will win at the Primero, sir!"

"Ah, if it were chess, with the bishops supporting the queen "

"What is your last word?"

"That I leap at the offer—I am nothing without your approval, holy father,"

"So instruct your lime-hounds."

The man drew up his cowl and glided in his sandals noiselessly away under the arches which made the palace resemble a cloister.

Don Jose resumed his vigils, pacing the long rows steadily, while musing, and humming an old Moorish song of love and battle.

Presently two workmen, gardener's assistants, emerged from a toolhouse in an angle, and, without more than glancing at the amateur sentry, proceeded to trim the trees.

Then, convinced that the lone gentleman was rather in favor of their movements than opposed, they ran along out of its cover a singular, but useful, engine.

Novel to him, he had the curiosity to go in that direction and observe their proceedings.

This engine was such as are used in lofty buildings to enable a painter or cleaner at ease to get at the heights. A platform, surrounded by a small rail, to prevent one's

being shaken over the edge, was worked upward by a screw turned by a cogwheel and crank.

"What is that Jacob's ladder for, my friends?" inquired Don Jose, disturbed by the occupancy of this trysting ground. "Do you expect thus to reach a footing in paradise?"

One of the men, with the gravity of common folk, responded, as he bowed with his cap off:

"Your lordship, while many a gallant has mounted among the angels, as he accounted them, by this ladder, it is used by us daily to let the man, thus elevated above his fellows, trim and prune the trees without injuring the least of the twigs or the fruits, which are counted. If }'XDur lordship will but be patient, we should not be surprised if his desire to add to his lore were amply gratified."

The platform at the surface of this engine, controlled by the men at the winc'hes, steadily rose until it reached the level of the second story.

"How ingenious!" cried Don Jose; "the most dainty page could thus hand a billet to the lady of his master's love!"

"Or the maid of the beauty could descend to earth to bless the gallant with the reply!" returned the spokesman of the pair. "But the best is yet to come. See!"

A tall window opened like a door of two folds, at the level of the platform, and a woman threw inside the surrounding guard a mantle, which carpeted the boards. Almost immediately, as if this means of rising and falling had been employed more than once before, a lady, for her richnes of cloak with its furred hood denoted that much, stepped out of the window upon the stage. Her attendant had raised the rail on that side in its socket and now replaced it.

"Lower!" cried the maid, but in a repressed tone.

•With the same care and mechanical regularity with

which they had wound up the platform, the two men reversed the winding beam, and the human load was safely brought to the ground. Don Jose stepped forward and offered his arm to help the lady step down- upon the gravel of the path.

The men, convinced that their work was momentarily finished, said not a word. They retired into the tool-house, where something like a hoe handle, but possibly a musketoon barrel, indicated that they were watcl\ing the gardens—for moles!

"Your majesty does me much honor," cried the police lieutenant, who had time to fortify himself for thisi interview during the operation.

"Why are you apprehensive?—alack! You need not fear that the king will surprise us! He is not here at this hour. It is that of his disappearances!"

"Well, your grace, if you do not know—who can call our liege to account for his hours' disposal?"

"Is it my place, sir?"

"No, not if, as I doubt, he but goes to counteract some caibal, some imbroglio in which his personal inspection is indispensable."

"I did not believe him so adventuresome!" she lightly scoffed.

"If he personally thwarts a plot, whait glory and example to do-nothing rulers!"

"The only plots in hatching are to replace him with a French prince or an Austrian archduke! Never, my lord, will he believe a Spaniard will hold out his hand to a foreigner, unless the national knife be in it!"

"Well, the fascination of gambling "

"You jest! a king need gamble only at his own table's; there, he may rely on always winning! No, he is playing, I think, a game where the king of hearts is to be warped from his liege!"

"Oho!" coug-hed Don Jose, almost speaking his gladness.

"What do you say?" said she.

"That the idea, saving your respect, is ridiculotis! though I lose my portfolio for my frankness!"

"I hear "

"Backstairs gossip^—court-alcove tattle!"

"I have other advices, not beneath my notice and quite credible as well as creditable."

"But still there is no court beauty so disloyal, so inimical to her sex, to wifehood, to ordinary rules of amity, as to—^oh, this treachery would be infamously ungrateful to your majesty."

"What the inquisitor does not spy, and what you are blind to, my informants "

"From the moment your majesty has a police of her own "

"Your resignation is hypocrisy! I do not believe youi to be an obstructor. But without warning to me, you allow my king to be absent for hours from the palace without his reasons and whereabouts being discovered."

"To be sure, if no lady of the land would dare to rival your majesty, there may be one embodiment of disrespect, who', failing to vie with the incomparable by fair means, employs foul ones."

"Certainly, there are black arts as well as black hearts to use them!"

"Precisely; love-potions, po'wders, talismans—my po-lice seize them by the basketful every month! This will go on as long as my petition is not heeded, that the quarter where lodge all the practicians of evil devices, •witches, sorcerers, Egyptians "

"You are coming to the fire!"

"'Ho! a gypsy "

'',8 The Queen's Confidant.

"Well, is it not written in the annals that one of your kings was entangled with a gypsy ?"

"Let me see; Don Pedro, the Cruel, was in love with Maria Padilha, one of that branded race^ "

"In love? A king love a rejected one!"

"I should say, infatuated! When one is captivated by an inferior, love is not in the chapter; it is infatuation!"

"Yes, the Church cannot deal with love, which is a 'blessed emotion—'but infatuation is to be proceeded against by bell, book and candle!"

"But, my gracious lady, if the gypsies "

"If the gvpsies bewitch my lord, why should I ap)-plaud their stupid gambols and speak encouragingly of that daughter of Herodias who dances for my heart! It is because the queen wishes to learn what your police and the spies of the Holy Tribunal fail to gather. And at the fountain-head, likewise. If I stoop to making a low creature like that gitana a pet, a plaything, a puppet, a magician's speaking-head to say 'my queen!' at a pinch, it is because I expect her to betray what goes on at midnight in that camp of pests and miscreants which you, indeed, ought to be let stamp out."

Don Jose, in the thickening darkness, felt that his ■blazing eyes revealed his sudden admiration for the woman whom he had thought made of wax, but who through jealousy had become flesh and blood.

"Admirable!" said he. "Well, I grant that my emissaries would bring me a dozen of these skipjacks who •would own to everything, snatch purse and betake themselves to their native Africa, but none would be the one at whom the king has deigned to throw the handkerchief."

"I would it were for her to be strangled with!" said the vindictive woman.

"But since such a siren would not boast of it to us

outside of her diabolical tribe, how single out the truei' offender? All are alluring, all good-looking in their alien mode, all daughters of the father of lies and mother of blandishments!"

"What the inquisitor and your subordinates fall short of, I require of you."

"It is not for me to shrink from the signal and appreciated task, great lady," said Don Jose, shuffling, "but, as it may oftend the king to "whom I owe my post "

"A hangman's post! what better? Suppose we find )nou a higher and ennobling one! What do you say to the premier's?"

The plotter pretended a surprise not felt, considering that he had already the formidable support of the priesthood promised him. Recovering hastily, he joyously repHed:

"As that would give me power to be usefully employed in your majesty's service, I should rejoice and kiss the hand which gave me the place."

"Then, while I try to prevail over this girl, you, on your part, must penetrate to the heart of that den of thieves, and witches' cave, and seek out the enticing evil!"

"I venture in the ghetto?"

"You are not fit for the head of the police unless you have dared to wade in that crime and guilt!"

"Oh, I have obeyed my duty," replied Don Jose, afraid that he had been spied by the secret agents of this woman who might, indeed, have organized a police superior to his—that is, the king's.

"Oh, I have had your daring and intrepidity reported to m.e! You have not hesitated to insinuate yourself where none but those of the league of dishonesty dared

to go. Run the gantlet for me this time; a good errand if ever a chief of police was set to one."

"To gratify a queen, a lady!" said he, bowing. "I would do anything."

"If it is through your guidance that the king is led back to his place, his last step will be over the portfolio of the prime minister—you understand \"

"I am your majesty's devoted servant," said he. "May my rise be as artistically successful," added he, watching the lady mount the platform, and the men, who had come out of their concealment, repeat the operation of sending up the stage to the palace windows.