Chapter I: Take Supper with My Wife 135 (2)

Just then there is a violent pull at the door-bell. The portal swings open instantly, so brusquely that it puts out the light of the lamp-post in the court. From the shadow of the doorway come rustling sounds and confused whisperings. There seems to be a great crowd wrangling and jostling to get in. There are footmen, a multitude of footmen, coaches with glass panes glimmering in the moonlight, sedan-chairs swaying lightly between two torches whose long flames writhe and twist in the draught of the doorway. In a second the court is crowded; but at the foot of the stairway the confusion ceases. People alight from the coaches, recognize one another, smile, bow, and make their way up the stairs, chatting softly as though they were quite familiar with the house. There is much rustling of silks and clanking of swords on the landing, and billows of white hair, heavy and dull with powder. Through the faint sound of the airy tread comes a thin, high quiver of voices and little peals of laughter that has lost its vibration. All these people seem old, very old,--eyes that have lost their fire, slumbering jewels that have lost their light, antique brocades that shimmer with a subdued iridescence in the light of the torches, and above it all a thin mist of powder that rises at every courtesy from the white-puffed scaffoldings of these stately heads. In a moment the place seems to be haunted. Torches glitter from window to window and up and down the curving stairways; the very dormers in the mansard twinkle with joy and life. The whole mansion is ablaze with light, as though a great burst of sunset had set its windows aglow.

"Merciful saints! they will set the house on fire!" thinks M. Majesté; and having recovered from his stupor, he makes an effort to shake the numbness from his legs, and hurries down into the court, where the footmen have just lighted a great bonfire. M. Majesté goes up to them, speaks to them; but they do not answer; they stand there chatting among themselves softly, and not the faintest breath issues from their lips into the freezing shadow of the night. M. Majesté is somewhat put out. He is reassured, however, when he realizes that this great fire with its long straight flames is a most peculiar fire, which emits no heat,--which simply glows, but does not burn. The good man therefore sets his mind at rest, goes upstairs again, and makes his way into the store.

These stores on the first floor must have been grand reception-halls in their day. Particles of tarnished gold still cling to the angles. Mythological frescos circle about the ceilings, wind round the mirrors, hover above the doorways, vague and subdued, like bygone memories. Unfortunately there are no curtains or furniture anywhere, nothing but baskets, great cases filled with leaden-headed siphons, and the withered limb of an old lilac bush rising in black outline outside the window. M. Majesté enters. He finds the rooms crowded and brilliantly illumined. He bows, but nobody seems to notice him. The women, in their satin wraps, lean on their cavaliers' arms and flirt with ceremonious, mincing graces. They promenade, chat, separate into groups. All these old marquises really seem quite at home. One little shade stops, all of a quiver, before a painted pier-glass; then she glances smilingly at a Diana that rises out of the wood-work, lithe and roseate, with a crescent on her brow.

"This is I; think of it! And here I am!"

"Nesmond, come and see your crest!" and they laugh immoderately at the sight of the Nesmond coat-of-arms displayed on the wrappers above the name of Majesté, Jr.

"Ha, ha, ha! Majesté! There are some majesties left in France after all, then!"

And there is no end of merriment, of mincing coquetries. Little trills of laughter rise like the notes of a flute in the air. Some one exclaims suddenly,--

"Champagne! champagne!"

"Nonsense!"

"Yes, indeed, champagne. Come, Countess, what say you to a little Christmas supper?"

They have mistaken M. Majesté's seltzer-water for champagne. They naturally find it somewhat flat. But these poor little ghosts have such unsteady heads! The foam of the seltzer-water somehow excites them and makes them feel like dancing. Minuets are immediately organized. Four rare violinists provided by Nesmond strike out with an old melody by Rameau, full of triplets, quaint and melancholy in its vivacity; and you should see the pretty little grandmothers turn slowly and bow gravely in time with the music.

Their very finery seems freshened and rejuvenated by the sound, and so do the waistcoats of cloth-of-gold, the brocaded coats and diamond-buckled shoes. The panels themselves seem to awake. The old mirror, scratched and dim, which has stood encased in the wall for over two hundred years, recognizes them all, glows softly upon them, showing them their own images with a pale vagueness like a tender regret.

In the midst of all this elegance M. Majesté feels somewhat ill at ease. He is huddled in a corner, and looks on from behind a case of bottles. But gradually the day dawns. Through the glass doors of the store one can see the court growing light, then the top of the windows, then all one side of the great parlor. Before the light of day the figures melt and disappear. The four little violinists alone are belated in a corner; and M. Majesté watches them evaporate as the daylight creeps upon them. In the court below he can just see the vague form of a sedan-chair, a powdered head sprinkled with emeralds, and the last spark of a torch that a lackey has dropped on the pavement, and which blends with the sparks from the wheels of a dray, rumbling in noisily through the open portals.

THE PRINCESS AND THE RAGAMUFFIN.

From the Spanish of BENITO PÉREZ GALDÓS.

I.

Pacorrito Migajas was a great character. He stood a trifle over two feet from the ground, and had just turned his seventh year. His skin was tanned by the sun and the wind, and his wizened face suggested a dwarf rather than a child. His eyes, adorned with long eyelashes that looked like black wires, were full of vitality and resplendent with mischief. His mouth was amazing in its ugliness; and his ears, strangely like those of a faun, seemed to have been attached to his face, rather than to have grown there. He was dressed in a shirt of every possible shade of grime, and a pair of patchwork trousers upheld by a single suspender. In the winter he wore a coat which he had inherited from his grandfather. The sleeves had been cut off at the elbow, and Pacorrito considered it a handsome fit, as overcoats go. A rag which aspired to be a muffler was wound like a snake round and round his neck, and on his head he wore a cap which he had picked up at the Rastro. He had little use for shoes, which he considered in the light of a hindrance, neither did he wear stockings, having a great aversion to the roughness of the threads.

Pacorrito's ancestors could not have been more illustrious. His father, accused of having attempted to make his way into a house through the drain, went to Ceuta for a change of climate, and died there. His mother, a great lady who for many years kept a chestnut-stand in the Cava de San Miguel, had also fallen somehow into the hands of the authorities, and after much ado with judges and notaries, had repaired to the Alcalá jail. Pacorrito had one sister, but this last relative had deserted her post at the tobacco factory and flown to Sevilla in amorous pursuit of an artillery officer. Up to the present she has not returned.

Migajas was therefore alone in the world, with no protection but that of God, and no guide but his own will.

II.

The pious reader need not fancy that Pacorrito was in the least daunted or disturbed at finding himself alone; not he. In his brief career he had had occasion to study the ways of the world, and he knew a thing or two about the fraud and vanity of life. He filled himself with energy and confronted the situation like a hero. He was on excellent terms with numerous persons of his age and quality, and even with bearded men, who seemed disposed to protect him, so by dint of push he got the better of his sad condition.

He sold matches, newspapers, and lottery tickets,--three branches of industry which, if intelligently pursued, might certainly be productive of honest gain. And so it happened that Pacorrito was never in want of a penny or so to assist a friend in need, or to treat his acquaintances of the fair sex.

He was spared all domestic worries, all household cares and exigencies. His palaces were the Prado in summer, and the portals of the _Casa Panadería_ in winter. By nature he was frugal and wisely inimical to the pomps of the world. He slept anywhere, ate whatever he found, just as the birds do, and suffered no anxiety on this score, because of the religious submissiveness that filled his soul, and his instinctive faith in that mysterious Providence which deserts no one, great or small. One might be apt to conclude from this that Migajas was happy. It seems natural enough that he should be. He was deprived of relatives, it is true, but he enjoyed the precious boon of liberty. As his wants were few, the fruit of his labor kept him in plenty, and he was not indebted to any one for anything. His sleep was disturbed neither by cares nor ambition. He was poor but contented; his body was destitute, but his spirit was rich in peace. Well, in spite of all this, my lord Pacorrito was unhappy. Why? Because he was in love,--over ears in love, as they commonly say.

Yes, sir, this very Pacorrito, who was so small, so ugly, so poor, and so alone, loved. Inexorable law of life, which permits no being, whatever his condition, to elude the despotic yoke of love! With a mind free from impure thoughts, our hero loved. He loved with a dreamer's idealism, yet at times he felt that ardent fire which set the blood boiling like the very devil in his veins. The object of his thoughts aroused every variety of sensation in his volcanic heart. He had days of sweet Platonicism, like Petrarch, then again, he was warm and impetuous, like Romeo. And who, pray, had inspired Pacorrito with this terrible passion? No less a person than a great lady who wore silk and velvet gowns, beautiful furs and gold eyeglasses,--a great lady with flaxen ringlets that fell on her alabaster neck, and who had been known to sit at the piano for three days in succession.

III.

Who was this celestial beauty, and how came Migajas to make her acquaintance? This is how it happened: Our hero's mercantile operations extended over a great part of one of the streets opening into the Puerta del Sol,--a busy thoroughfare lined with beautiful shops, the show-windows of which are resplendent at night, and display all the marvels of industry. One of these stores, which is kept by a German, is always full of exquisite trifles and novelties. It is the great bazaar of childhood, both juvenile and adult. During the Carnival it is hung with grotesque masks; in Holy Week it is filled with figures of saints and pious images. At Christmas and New Year's it is all Bethlehem mangers and Christmas-trees, laden with toys and magnificent presents.

Pacorrito's mad passion began when the German filled his show-window with the most enchanting collection of richly dressed ladies that Parisian fancy could conceive. Almost all of them were two feet tall. Their faces were of highly refined wax, and the crimson of fresh roses could not equal the glow of their chaste cheeks. Their immobile eyes of blue glass shone with a splendor surpassing that of the human pupil. Their hair of softest crimped wool could with greater justice be compared to the rays of the sun than that of most great ladies; and the strawberries of April, the cherries of May, and the coral from the deep seas were ugly things compared to their lips. Their good breeding and deportment were such that they never stirred from the spot where they were placed. They merely creaked the wooden joints of their knees, their shoulders, and their elbows, when the German sat them at the piano or made them raise their eyeglasses to look out into the street. Otherwise they were no trouble whatever, and no one had ever heard them say, "This month is mine."

There was one among them,--what a woman! She was the tallest, the most lithe, the most beautiful, the most sympathetic, the most elegant,--in a word, the greatest lady of them all. She was no doubt a person of high degree, judging from her grave, grand manner and that patronizing air which was so becoming to her.

"Grand woman! She is the paragon!" thought Pacorrito the first time he saw her, and for a whole hour he stood before the show-window, rooted to the sidewalk.

IV.

Pacorrito had reached the state of emotional excitement, the delirium peculiar to heroes of romance. His brain boiled; writhing, stinging serpents wound themselves around his heart; his mind was a volcano; he despised life; he longed for death; he soliloquized; he gazed at the moon; he soared beyond the seventh heaven. Many a time had night overtaken him in a melancholy ecstasy before the show-window, oblivious to everything, oblivious to his very business interests. It might be well to state at once that our good Migajas met with no rebuff. I mean that his mad passion was to a certain extent reciprocated. Who can measure the intensity of a heart of tow and sawdust? The world is full of mysteries. Science is vain and will never penetrate the depths of things. Who will draw the line defining the exact sphere of the inanimate? Where does the inanimate begin? Down with the pedant who stands before a stone or a cork and says, "Thou hast no soul." God alone knows the true dimensions of the invisible limbo, wherein rests all that which does not love.

Pacorrito was quite sure of having stirred his lady's pulse. She gazed at him, and without moving a muscle, opening her mouth, or winking an eye, she spoke soulful things to him, now sweet as hope, now sad like the prescience of tragic events. This naturally fanned the flame that burned in our friend's heart, and his daring imagination conceived dramatic plans of conquest, and even of matrimony.

One night the faithful lover repaired punctually to the tryst. The lady was seated at the piano, her hands suspended over the keys, and her divine face turned to the street. The ragamuffin and she exchanged glances; and what passion, what idealism, in that look! Sighs and tender thoughts were following one another, when an event occurred which clipped the thread of this sweet communion and shattered at one blow the happiness of both lovers. It was one of those sudden catastrophes that inflict a mortal wound and lead to suicides, tragedies, and other lamentable things.

A hand proceeding from the interior of the shop was thrust into the show-window; it caught the lady by the belt and disappeared with her within. Pacorrito's amazement was followed by a sense of misery so intense that he longed to die there and then. To see the object of his love vanish as though she had been swallowed by the insatiable grave, to be unable to rescue her or follow her, were it to the bottomless pit, ah, here was a blow which was beyond human endurance!

Migajas was about to drop on the sidewalk. He thought of suicide; he invoked God and the Devil.

"They have sold her!" he muttered hoarsely; and he pulled his hair and scratched his face and kicked, and as he did so he dropped his matches, his lottery tickets, and his newspapers. Worldly interests, you are not worth a sigh!

V.

After a time, when he had recovered from his violent emotion, he glanced toward the interior of the store and saw two or three grown persons and several little girls talking with the German. One of these little girls held in her arms the lady of his thoughts. He felt like rushing upon them frantically, but he forbore, for it occurred to him that his appearance was not in his favor, and that there would be every chance of his getting a sound drubbing and being handed over to the police. He stood rooted to the threshold, meditating upon the horrors of the slave-trade, upon this heinous Tyrolese institution wherein a few dollars decided the fate of honest creatures, exposing them to the savage destructiveness of ill-bred children. Human nature appeared to him in all its baseness. Those who had purchased the lady left the shop and entered a luxurious carriage. And how they laughed, the wretches! Even the wee fellow, the most petted and spoiled of them all, no doubt, took the liberty of pulling the unfortunate doll by the arms, although he had the greatest quantity of toys appropriate to his age and for his own exclusive enjoyment. The grown persons, too, seemed satisfied with the new acquisition.

While the footman stood by to receive orders, Pacorrito, who was a person of heroic and daring resolutions, conceived the idea of swinging behind the carriage. This he did with that agility peculiar to the ragamuffin when he wishes to take a ride across the city.

Stretching his neck to the right, he saw the arm of the lady who had been sacrificed to lucre sticking out of the window. This rigid arm and its pink fist spoke forcibly to his imagination, calling to him through the rumble of the wheels:

"Save me, save me, my Pacorrito!"

VI.

Under the archway of the great dwelling before which the carriage stopped, Pacorrito's illusion vanished. A servant informed him that if he soiled the flagstones with his muddy feet, he would have his back-bone broken. Migajas retired before this overwhelming argument, but from that instant his heart was filled with a scorching thirst for vengeance. His fiery nature impelled him forward into the night of the unforeseen, into the arms of his fortune. His soul was well fitted to noisy and dramatic adventures, so what should he do but make a compact with those who removed the garbage from the house where his beloved lived enslaved; and by this means--which may not have been altogether poetical, but which revealed the shrewdness of a heart as big as the top of a pine-tree--he found his way into the palace. How his heart throbbed as he went up the stairs and into the kitchen! The thought of being near her confused him so that more than once his basket fell from his hand, spilling its contents down the steps. But nowhere could he see his lady-love. He often heard the screams of children at play, but nothing more.

The servants, because he was so little and so ugly, played many a trick upon him. One alone, who seemed more compassionate than the rest, gave him sweetmeats. One cold morning the cook, through pity or through sheer wickedness perhaps, gave him a draught of wine that was as biting and fiery as the very devil. The ragamuffin felt a warm and delightful current run through his whole body while hot vapors rose to his head. His legs trembled; his limp arms fell beside him in voluptuous abandon. A stream of playful laughter rose from his heart and gurgled from his lips; and Pacorrito held on to the wall with both hands to keep from falling. A vigorous kick somewhat modified his mirth, and he left the kitchen. His brain was topsy-turvy. He had no idea where his steps were leading him. He ran along staggering and laughing, first over cold tiles, then over smooth boarded floors, then over soft, warm carpets. Suddenly he caught sight of an object on the floor. He stood petrified for a second; then he uttered a roar of pain and fell upon his knees. Heavens! There, stretched before him like a corpse, with a crack through her alabaster brow, a broken arm, and dishevelled locks, was the lady of his thoughts.

For a moment our hero was speechless. His voice was smothered in his throat. He pressed the cold body to his heart and covered it with burning kisses. The lady's eyes were open, and she gazed with melancholy tenderness at her faithful lover, for she lived, in spite of her wounds. Pacorrito knew it by the singular light of her calm blue eyes, that emitted little flames of love and gratitude.

"Señora, let me know who reduced you to this sad condition!" he exclaimed in pathetic and anguished tones. His pain was soon followed by a burst of rage, and he thought of the great revenge he would take upon the perpetrators of the iniquity. Just then he heard footsteps approaching, so he tucked the lady under his arm and started on a run. He went down the stairs, crossed the court, and broke into the street. He could scarcely be said to be running; he was flying, like a bird that has stolen grain, heard a report, and feeling itself unhurt, determines to put the greatest possible distance between itself and the gun. He ran past one, two, three, ten streets, till he thought he was far enough away to be in safety, and then stopped to rest, laying the object of his insensate tenderness upon his knees.

VII.

Night came upon him, and he welcomed with delight the soft shadows that hid the daring act and protected his love. He examined her injured body carefully, and concluded that the wounds were not serious, although one might have seen her brain, had she had one, through the opening in her skull, and the sawdust of her heart poured out in copious streams through the rents in her breast. Her gown was in shreds, and part of her hair had been dropped in the hasty flight. His soul overflowed with sorrow when he realized that he had not the money with which to meet the situation. As he had given up his business, naturally his pockets were empty, and a loved woman, particularly if she is in poor health, is a source of unlimited expense. Migajas laid his hand sadly upon that part of his rags wherein he had habitually kept his coin, but nothing was there.

"At this critical moment," thought he, "when I need a house, a bed, a world of doctors and surgeons, an abundance of food, a bright fire and a dressmaker, I have nothing--nothing!"

But as he was very tired, he laid his head upon his idol's body and fell asleep like an angel.

Then a great miracle took place. The lady began to revive, and finally rising to her feet, showed Pacorrito a smiling countenance. The wound had disappeared from her noble brow; her lithe form was without a rent, her gown neat and whole. On her curled and perfumed locks she wore a coquettish hat trimmed with minute flowers,--in a word, she stood before him in all her beauty just as he had known her in the show-window.

Migajas was dazzled, stupefied, dumb. He fell on his knees and worshipped her as people do a divinity. Then she took the ragamuffin by the hand, and in a voice clear, pure, and sweeter than the song of the nightingale, she said to him,--

"Pacorrito, follow me! I want to show you my gratitude, and tell you of the sublime love with which you have inspired me. You have been loyal, constant, generous, heroic; you have rescued me from the power of those Vandals that tortured me. You deserve my heart and my hand. Come, follow me! Do not be foolish; do not think you are inferior to me because you are in rags."

Migajas gazed at the lady's elegant, luxurious attire and said sadly, "My lady, where can I go in this dress?"

The lady did not answer; she merely led Pacorrito by the hand into a mysterious region of shadows.

The ragamuffin soon found himself in a grand parlor brilliantly illumined and filled with beautiful objects. The first moment of bewilderment passed, he distinguished a thousand different figures and statuettes, like those that peopled the shop in which he had seen his beloved for the first time. What greatly surprised him was to see all the fine ladies who in shimmering gowns had occupied the show-window with his friend come forth to meet them. His lady accepted their homage with grave and ceremonious courtesy. She seemed to belong to a higher caste than they. Her queenly manner, her proud though not haughty bearing, suggested dominion. She immediately presented Pacorrito. For his part he was much confused and grew redder than a poppy when the princess, taking his hand, said,--

"Allow me to present to you the Señor Don Pacorrito de las Migajas, who will honor us with his presence to-night."

The wings of his heart drooped, as they say, when he compared the luxury that surrounded him with his own poverty, his rags, his bare feet, his torn trousers upheld by a single suspender, and his coat-sleeves cut off at the elbow.

"I can divine your thoughts," said the princess, aside. "Your dress is not the most appropriate for a celebration like this. As a matter of fact, you are not presentable."

"Señora, that deuced tailor of mine," stammered Migajas, "has been false to his word, and--"

"Never mind; we will dress you here," said the noble lady.

The valets in this strange mansion were tiny and very comical monkeys. Wee parrots of the kind known as perricos acted as pages, to say nothing of a great number of paper birds. They immediately set to work to repair, as far as it was possible, Pacorrito's unfortunate appearance. They slipped his feet into a pair of tiny gilded match-boxes that made the most stylish boots; they cut a neck-cloth for him out of half a little red paper lantern and turned an osier flower-pot into a sort of pastoral hat which they trimmed elaborately with flowers. As Pacorrito had never been decorated, they took a metal plate from an elegant Kepi and hung it around his neck, by way of a decoration, and also a match-box, which was round and looked like a watch, and the cut-glass stopper of a small bottle of perfumery. The paper birds conceived the happy thought of putting an ivory paper-cutter in his belt, to figure as a sword or dagger. Thanks to these and numerous other inventions for concealing his tatters, our friend looked so handsome that no one would have recognized him. As he caught sight of himself in the mirror-top of a work-box, he swelled with pride. He was radiant.

VIII.

The ball now began. A number of canaries from their respective cages sang waltzes and _habaneras_. The cornets and the clarionets too were very skilful in pressing their keys all by themselves; the violins pinched their own strings; and the trumpets blew into each other. Migajas thought this music was entrancing. It is unnecessary to say that the princess danced with him. The other ladies found partners among the officers of the army and the sovereigns who had left their horses outside. Among these were Prince Bismarck, the Emperor of Germany, and Napoleon. Migajas was beside himself with pride and excitement. It would be impossible to describe the emotions of his soul as he dashed into the dizzy whirls of the waltz with his beloved in his arms. Her soft breathing and an occasional stray lock of her golden hair caressed his cheek, tickling him gently and producing a strange intoxication. A loving glance or a little sigh of fatigue would every now and then put a climax to his madness.

Suddenly the monkeys appeared and announced supper. This caused a great commotion. Migajas rejoiced greatly, for with no prejudice to the spiritual character of his love, the poor little fellow was very hungry.

IX.

The dining-hall was superb and the table exquisite. The china was of the very finest manufactured for dolls, and a multitude of bouquets showed their colors and scattered their fragrance from egg-stands and thimbles. Pacorrito sat at the princess's right. They began to eat. The parrots and paper birds waited upon them with such order and rapidity that they seemed like soldiers drilling before their general. The dishes were delicious. Everything was raw, or at all events cold. Migajas was rather pleased with the supper at first, but he was soon surfeited. The menu was as follows: bits of sponge cake, turkeys smaller than birds, which one could swallow at a mouthful, gilt-heads no bigger than almonds, a rich supply of hemp-seed, a pâté of bird-seed à la Canaria, bread-crumb à la perdigona, a fricassée of pheasants' eyes with a sauce of wild mulberries, a salad of moss, delicious sweetmeats, and every possible variety of fruit, harvested by the parrots from the tapestries where they were embroidered, the melons being as small as grapes and the grapes as small as lentils. During the supper the company chattered ceaselessly,--all but Migajas, who, being short of wit, sat there and said never a word. He was confused in the presence of so many gold-corded and uniformed generals. He was amazed, too, at finding so much loquacity and frolicsomeness in these great men, who had stood stiff and dumb in the show-window as though they were made of clay.

The one known as Bismarck, in particular, never stopped to draw breath. He said the wildest things imaginable, pounded the table with his fist, and threw bread balls at the princess. He flung his arms about most marvellously, just as though a string were attached to their hinges, and somebody under the table had hold of it.

"What fun I am having!" said the chancellor. "My dear princess, when a man spends his life adorning a mantel-piece in the cheerful company of a clock, a bronze figure, and a pot of begonias, he really needs recreation; and at a festival like this he lays in a supply of mirth for the year."

"Ah, happy, a thousand times happy, they whose only duty consists in adorning mantelpieces!" said the lady, in melancholy tones. "It may be wearisome, but you do not at least suffer as we do,--we whose lives are a prolonged martyrdom; we, the toys of the small men. It would be impossible for me to make you understand, Prince Bismarck, what we suffer when one pulls our right arm, another our left; when this one cracks our head, that one quarters us or leaves us in the water to soak, or rips us open to find out what is inside of us!"

"I can imagine it," said the chancellor, opening his arms and clapping them together several times.

"How unfortunate!" said Espartero and two of the emperors at once.

"I was the least unfortunate of all," said the lady, "for I found a friend and protector in the valorous and faithful Migajas, who managed to save me from the barbarous torture."

Pacorrito blushed to the very roots of his hair.

"Valorous and faithful!" repeated all the dolls, in admiring chorus.

"And therefore to-night, when our Genius Creator permits us to come together for this great celebration, I chose to honor him by bringing him with me and offering him my hand as a sign of alliance and reconciliation between the lineage of dolls and that of well-bred, compassionate children."

X.

At this Prince Bismarck looked at Pacorrito with an expression of such malignity and sarcasm that our illustrious hero was filled with wrath. At the same instant this wretch of a chancellor aimed a bread ball at Migajas, and fired it so accurately that the bridegroom came near being blinded for life. But Migajas was a prototype of prudence and circumspection, so he controlled his feelings and was silent. The princess threw him a glance of love and gratitude.

"What fun I am having!" repeated the chancellor, clapping his wooden hands together. "Before it is time to resume our place beside the clock and listen to its unceasing tic-tac, let us fathom the depths of pleasure and intoxication,--let us be happy! If the Señor Pacorrito would favor us by calling the daily paper, we might laugh a little."

"The Señor de Migajas," said the princess, kindly, "did not come here to make us laugh. But there is no reason why we should not enjoy hearing him call out the paper or even matches if he is willing to do so."

The ragamuffin could find no words with which to answer his beloved. He was sorely incensed at the proposition, which he judged to be a fling at his dignity and decorum.

"Let him dance!" shouted the chancellor, impertinently; "let him dance on the table! and if he refuse to do so, I move that he be stripped of the fine clothes we dressed him in, and be left ragged and barefooted as he was when he came."

Migajas felt all his blood rush to his heart. He was blind with rage. "Do not be cruel, my dear prince," said the princess, smiling; "leave him to me. I will take it upon myself to dispel the storm that is rising within our good Migajas here."

A loud peal of laughter greeted this reply, and all the dolls, and the most celebrated generals and emperors of the world, simultaneously fell to pounding one another's heads like the Punch and Judy puppets.

"Make him dance! make him call matches!" they clamored.

Migajas felt faint. The sentiment of dignity was so powerfully developed in him that he would have died rather than have gone through the suggested degradation. He was just about to reply when the malignant chancellor, pulling a long thin straw from a work-basket and wetting the end of it in his mouth, drove it into Pacorrito's ear with such a quick movement that the latter did not realize the familiarity of the act until he had suffered the nervous shock produced by tricks of this sort.

Blind with rage, he put his hand to his belt and drew the paper-cutter. The ladies shrieked and the princess fainted; but the enraged Migajas, far from being pacified by this, seemed to be growing more and more infuriated, and rushing upon his insolent adversary, he began to deal blows right and left. The air was filled with yells, threats, and imprecations. The parrots croaked and the very birds moved their paper tails in sign of panic.

Nobody laughed now at the daring Migajas. A few moments later the chancellor might have been seen going about gathering up his arms and legs (a strange case which cannot be explained), and all the emperors were noseless. They gradually, however, with a little glue and a great deal of innate skill, mended one another,--a rare advantage, this, of puppet surgery. The princess, having recovered from her swoon through the virtue of smelling-salts, administered by her pages in a filbert-shell, called the ragamuffin aside, and leading him to her private apartments, spoke as follows:--

XI.

"Most illustrious Migajas, what you have just done, far from lessening my love for you, has only increased it, for you have given evidence of indomitable valor by your easy triumph over this swarm of scoffing puppets, the most despicable class of beings on earth. The tender sentiments that bind me to you move me to propose that you become my husband with no further delay."

Pacorrito fell on his knees.

"As soon as we are married, the emperors and chancellors will all venerate you as they do me, for I must tell you that I am queen of this division of the world. My titles are not usurped; they are transmitted by the divine law of puppets established by the Supreme Genius that created us and governs us."

"My lady," Migajas said, or tried to say, "my happiness is so great that I cannot express it."

"Very well, then," said the lady, with great majesty, "since you are willing to become my husband, and consequently prince and lord of this puppet kingdom, I must inform you that in order to do so you will have to renounce your human personality."

"I do not exactly grasp your Majesty's meaning," said the ragamuffin.

"You belong to the human race. I do not. Our natures being different, we cannot unite. There is but one way. Give up your humanity. It is the easiest thing in the world, believe me. It is only necessary that you will it. Now, answer me. Pacorrito, son of man, will you be a puppet?"

The peculiar nature of this request set the ragamuffin to thinking for a few seconds.

"And what does this thing of being a puppet consist in?"

"You will be like me. Our nature is perhaps nearer perfection than yours. We are to all appearances devoid of life, but we live, believe me. To the imperfect senses of man we lack movement, words, affection, but this is far from being the case. You have had an opportunity of judging how we move, how we speak, and how we feel. Our fate, for the present at least, is not a very happy one. We are the toys of your children, and even your men, but as a compensation for this disadvantage we are eternal."

"Eternal!"

"Yes; we live forever. When these wicked children of yours break us, we rise with a new life out of our destruction, and are born anew, describing a mysterious and everlasting circle from the shop to the children, from them to the Tyrolese factory, and thence to the shop again through the ages everlasting."

"Through the ages everlasting!" repeated Migajas, absorbed.

"It is not always rose-color with us; but, on the other hand, you see, we do not know death, and then our Genius Creator permits us to meet at certain great festivals to celebrate the glory of our race, as we have done to-night. We cannot elude the laws of our being,--it is not given us to enter the reign of humanity, although men can easily enter ours, and in fact have very often been known to become puppets."

"A most extraordinary thing!" exclaimed Pacorrito, full of amazement.

"You know the requirements of puppet initiation. I have nothing more to say. Our dogmas are very simple. Now, meditate upon it, and answer my question, Will you be a doll?"

The princess's attitude was that of a priestess of antiquity. Pacorrito was captivated.

"I want to be a doll," declared the ragamuffin, resolutely.

The princess then proceeded to trace diabolical characters in the air, and to utter great words which Pacorrito had never heard before, and which were neither Latin, Chinese, nor Chaldean. He concluded that they were Tyrolese. When this was consummated, the lady threw her arms about Migajas, saying,--

"Now you are my husband. I have the power of marrying, and also of receiving neophytes into our Great Law. My darling little prince, may you be blessed through time everlasting!" And the whole court of figures entered, singing, "Through time everlasting!" to the accompaniment of canaries and nightingales.

XII.

They all promenaded through the parlors in couples. Migajas gave his arm to his royal consort.

"What a pity," said she, "that our hours of pleasure should be so brief! Soon we shall have to return to our places."

His Serene Highness, Migajas, from the moment of his transformation, had begun to experience the queerest sensations. The strangest of these consisted in his having lost the sense of taste and the notion of food. All he had eaten lay within him as though his stomach had been a basket containing a thousand pasteboard viands which he did not digest, which had no substance, weight, taste, or nourishment. Moreover, he was no longer master of his movements, and was compelled to keep time when he walked, which was a difficult thing to do. He felt himself growing hard, as though he were being turned to bone, wood, or clay. He thumped himself, and behold! his body resounded like porcelain. His clothes, too, had grown hard, and were in every respect precisely like his body.

When he found himself alone with his little wife and clasped her to his bosom, he experienced no human or divine sensation of pleasure,--nothing but the harsh shock of two hard, cold bodies. He kissed her cheek; it was frozen. In vain did his hungry spirit call upon nature. Nature in him was what it is in a piece of pottery. He felt his heart throbbing like the machinery of a watch. His thoughts alone survived; the rest was all unfeeling matter.

The princess seemed very happy. "What is the matter, my love?" said she, observing Pacorrito's expression of distress.

"I am weary, bored, bored to death, my dear," said the lover, gaining assurance.

"You will get accustomed to it. O happy hours! If this lasted much longer, we could not endure it!"

"Does your Highness call this happiness?" observed Migajas. "What coldness, what emptiness, what rigidity!"

"The after-taste of human things still lingers in your soul, and you are still a slave to the views of your depraved human senses. Pacorrito, I shall have to implore you to control these paroxysms, or you will be the demoralization and destruction of every living doll."

"Life! life! blood! heat!" shouted Migajas, in despair, gesticulating like a maniac. "What is happening to me?"

The princess clasped him to her bosom, and kissing him with her red, waxen lips, exclaimed:

"You are mine, forever, forever, through time everlasting!"

Just then they heard a great commotion, and the sound of many voices crying,--

"It is time! it is time!"

The clock struck twelve, and all had disappeared, princess, palace, dolls, and emperors. Pacorrito was left alone.

XIII.

He was left alone in the most complete darkness. He tried to scream, but he was voiceless. He made frantic attempts to move, but he could not; he had turned to stone.

He waited in anguish. Day dawned at last; and Pacorrito had resumed his old appearance, but strange to say, he was all of one color, and apparently all of one substance,--his hands, his arms, his rags, his hair, and even the newspapers which he held in his hand.

"There is no doubt about it," said he; "I have turned into a stone."

Before him he saw a great sheet of plate-glass, with some letters on it, running backward. Around him was a multitude of statuettes and fancy ornaments.

"Horror! I must be in the show-window!"

A clerk took him carefully in his hands, and having dusted him, put him back in his place.

His Serene Highness looked down upon the pedestal on which he stood, and saw a card with the figures $12.00 upon it.

"Good heavens! I am worth a treasure! That, at least, partially consoles one."

And the people stopped on the other side of the plate-glass to admire the wonderful bit of clay statuary representing a ragamuffin selling matches and newspapers. Everybody praised the artist, and laughed at the droll expression and bungling figure of the great Migajas, while he in the inmost recesses of his clay repeated in anguish,--

"A puppet! a puppet! forever! through time everlasting!"

A TRAGEDY.

From the Spanish of ANTONIO MARÉ.

It was a great city in the far North, a gloomy city with pointed roofs that seemed to have been carved out of the fog. The birds that hurried past it on their journey south said to themselves that it looked like a forest of steeples. Under one of these pointed roofs lived two young people whom the coldness of emigration had huddled together in a closer intimacy. They were very unconscious of the fog, and it never occurred to them that the city looked like a forest of steeples; in fact, they never thought of the city at all, and would scarcely have been surprised if they had heard it spoken of as an orange grove,--for they were lovers. The little nest they had built themselves under the pointed roof was bright with the sunshine that came from them; and the few people who entered there became intoxicated with a strange aroma of tenderness that surged to their brains like the fumes of old wine, in sweet reminiscences or disturbing suggestions.

It would not be perfectly correct to say that these young people lived entirely alone; and had they not been so absorbed in each other, living that life of double selfishness peculiar to lovers, they could scarcely have helped feeling a soft blue gaze fixed upon them, evening after evening, as they took their accustomed places before the hearth.

On the mantel-piece which overhung the hearth was a small black marble clock, a statuette of Psyche with butterfly wings made of plaster, a little Italian shepherd of very primitively tinted clay, and a bisque vase. Now, this vase was the gem of the drawing-room. On its bosom was painted a running stream that broke into cataracts here and there over glossy brown stones. Its pitch was amazingly abrupt. It started at the brim of the vase and disappeared under it. On its banks, far away in a misty perspective of pink and violet trees, were a number of shadowy little shepherdesses, some carrying tender lambs, others dancing the minuet, but all very blithe and merry. At some distance from them, and at the very front, where the cataract roared its loudest, stood a much larger shepherdess in clear relief, thrusting herself boldly forward as though she meant to leap from the parental vase, to which she was bound only by the tip of her flowered skirt and the heel of her slippered foot. She held her crook high in the air as if to balance herself in her flight. In her other hand was a wreath of corn-flowers, with which she shaded a pair of dreamy blue eyes that gazed in perpetual wonder at the world below. Her sisters were simple little things, who were content to play with a lambkin all day long in the sun, or dance the minuet under the trees, but who had absolutely no ideas. Now, this particular little shepherdess had not only ideas, she had thoughts, and what was more, she was conscious of them. It was not to be wondered at that all things fell in love with each other in this peculiar little room; nor was it surprising that most things fell in love with the little shepherdess. The wonder was that she, on the other hand, fell in love with nothing. This superiority of thought was very isolating, and her aloneness would have been unendurable but for the gratifying nature of its cause. The clock was an unpleasant neighbor,--childless and critical, which sometimes means the same thing. Its conversation invariably took the form of a colloquy, stiff with rules, bristling with maxims; besides, having gone through life measuring out time, it had reached that stage of indiscriminate scepticism which is the greatest possible damper on the open-mindedness of others.

There was the little clay shepherd, to be sure, who was very well thought of by the community at large. The shepherdess liked him,--certainly she liked him,--and she sometimes spoke her thoughts to him, but she never could have loved him, had the drawing-room been the Desert of Sahara and he its only other inhabitant. She was always perfectly frank with him whenever he broached the subject.

"In the first place, I do not believe that you are really in love," she said to him kindly; "you only think you are, because everybody else seems to be. Reflect a little, and I am sure you will agree with me,--for my part, I have given it a great deal of serious thought. The air seems full of thrills for all of you lately, but you should be very careful; a thrill is a dangerous prism through which to look at life." And to herself she said, "Poor little fellow! he thinks he can build a bonfire out of two straws."

She could not associate love with his healthy plumpness. He was even-tempered, and had an occasional idea, but no theories; he wanted things without longing for them; his love was tender but not invariably delicate. She felt the fault to be in his head rather than in his heart; he always acquiesced, but seldom understood.

On the table in the centre of the room was a Chinese mandarin, who was also in love with the little shepherdess, but she absolutely abhorred him. To her mind he was coarse and repulsive, in spite of his wealth. His jokes never amused her. Still he was a humorist, and had a way of wobbling his head and poking out his tongue that threw the whole drawing-room into convulsions of laughter. Poor little shepherdess! Well, she did what we all do under similar circumstances. She built herself a world of her own,--a little intellectual laboratory into which she dragged bits of careful observation to be submitted to the tests of her theories. So, poised like a sparrow on a twig, she continued to peer over the edge of the mantel-piece, where she saw quite enough to set her thinking.

Her master and mistress were a source of constant study to her. Late in the evening, when he sat on a broad, low chair before the fire, and she on the floor resting her head against his knees, the little shepherdess's eyes fairly glowed with concentrated attention. "So that must be love," she thought, as she made a note of something indefinable that quivered on their lips, or trembled on their eyelids and made them droop. "I wonder how they feel! I wish I knew!" She was watching her mistress with peculiar interest one night, when she saw her slip her hand into her husband's coat-pocket, and draw out an envelope with no stamp upon it. This she held for a second or two, undecided as to whether she would read its contents. She looked up inquiringly at her husband, then with a quick movement thrust it back unopened, and laughingly threw her arms about his neck to drive away the unpleasant impression. "That is a grave mistake," thought the little shepherdess. "Why should there be anything that he should not want her to know? As a principle, it is wrong. It is because people build their love on illusions that they fear revelations. Why are they so cowardly? I do not believe the truth to be as black as it is painted. We should love, knowing,--that is the way. There must be such a thing. Oh, when I love--" and her eyes grew misty at the very thought, and the lace on her little bodice rose and fell.

The days came and went, and found her growing ever more dainty, and more thoughtful too. At last she opened her blue eyes, one Christmas Eve, upon what struck her at first as something alarming. It was midnight; and a stealthy sound of creaking boots awoke her from her first sleep and in the very midst of a wonderful dream. Her little heart was beating very fast. At first she thought it might be a burglar who had heard of her cleverness and her philosophies, and who had broken into the house to steal her away, but in a second a match was struck and she understood her mistake. Her master stood before her in the middle of the room. She saw him tiptoe to the door, close it tightly, then stand listening for a moment before lighting the gas. What could he be so mysterious about? She rubbed her eyes and watched him attentively. She soon discovered that he held a bundle under his arm, and she smiled to herself knowingly. "A Christmas present," she said; and she leaned so far forward that she almost tipped off the mantel-piece. Her master sat down, laid the package on his lap, and cut the strings with his penknife; then he removed the wrappings as noiselessly as possible. Though the little shepherdess had entirely recovered from her alarm, she began to experience a sensation entirely new to her. She felt as though there were a tight band around her waist that kept her from breathing freely. Her head grew hollow; and a sickened sense of misery--physical and mental anguishes writhing and knotting themselves in the pit of her stomach--made her feel strangely faint. What could this mean? Was it a foreboding? When the last wrapping was carefully laid aside, she opened her eyes with a great effort and looked upon the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. On the little table directly opposite her, stood a figure about eight inches high,--exquisite, dazzling! "A prince!" she thought at first; for he was richly dressed, had a noble air, and on his short dark curls he wore a crown. But no; he was not a prince.