Ah! he was a
handsome young fellow for a Spaniard, who are all ugly they say. He was
not more than five feet two or three in height, but so well made; and he
had little hands that he kept so beautifully! Ah! you should have
seen them. He had as many brushes for his hands as a woman has for her
toilet. He had thick, black hair, a flame in his eye, a somewhat coppery
complexion, but which I admired all the same. He wore the finest linen
I have ever seen, though I have had princesses to lodge here, and, among
others, General Bertrand, the Duc and Duchesse d'Abrantes, Monsieur
Descazes, and the King of Spain. He did not eat much, but he had such
polite and amiable ways that it was impossible to owe him a grudge for
that. Oh! I was very fond of him, though he did not say four words to me
in a day, and it was impossible to have the least bit of talk with him;
if he was spoken to, he did not answer; it is a way, a mania they all
have, it would seem.

"'He read his breviary like a priest, and went to mass and all the
services quite regularly. And where did he post himself?--we found this
out later.--Within two yards of Madame de Merret's chapel. As he took
that place the very first time he entered the church, no one imagined
that there was any purpose in it. Besides, he never raised his nose
above his book, poor young man! And then, monsieur, of an evening he
went for a walk on the hill among the ruins of the old castle. It was
his only amusement, poor man; it reminded him of his native land. They
say that Spain is all hills!

"'One evening, a few days after he was sent here, he was out very late.
I was rather uneasy when he did not come in till just on the stroke of
midnight; but we all got used to his whims; he took the key of the door,
and we never sat up for him. He lived in a house belonging to us in the
Rue des Casernes. Well, then, one of our stable-boys told us one evening
that, going down to wash the horses in the river, he fancied he had seen
the Spanish Grandee swimming some little way off, just like a fish. When
he came in, I told him to be careful of the weeds, and he seemed put out
at having been seen in the water.

"'At last, monsieur, one day, or rather one morning, we did not find
him in his room; he had not come back. By hunting through his things, I
found a written paper in the drawer of his table, with fifty pieces of
Spanish gold of the kind they call doubloons, worth about five thousand
francs; and in a