r and
fuller in person; her eyes were of a different colour; her face, besides,
was not only free from the ill-significance that offended and attracted
me in the painting; it was devoid of either good or bad--a moral blank
expressing literally naught. And yet there was a likeness, not so much
speaking as immanent, not so much in any particular feature as upon the
whole. It should seem, I thought, as if when the master set his
signature to that grave canvas, he had not only caught the image of one
smiling and false-eyed woman, but stamped the essential quality of a
race.

From that day forth, whether I came or went, I was sure to find the
Senora seated in the sun against a pillar, or stretched on a rug before
the fire; only at times she would shift her station to the top round of
the stone staircase, where she lay with the same nonchalance right across
my path. In all these days, I never knew her to display the least spark
of energy beyond what she expended in brushing and re-brushing her
copious copper-coloured hair, or in lisping out, in the rich and broken
hoarseness of her voice, her customary idle salutations to myself. These,
I think, were her two chief pleasures, beyond that of mere quiescence.
She seemed always proud of her remarks, as though they had been
witticisms: and, indeed, though they were empty enough, like the
conversation of many respectable persons, and turned on a very narrow
range of subjects, they were never meaningless or incoherent; nay, they
had a certain beauty of their own, breathing, as they did, of her entire
contentment. Now she would speak of the warmth, in which (like her son)
she greatly delighted; now of the flowers of the pomegranate trees, and
now of the white doves and long-winged swallows that fanned the air of
the court. The birds excited her. As they raked the eaves in their
swift flight, or skimmed sidelong past her with a rush of wind, she would
sometimes stir, and sit a little up, and seem to awaken from her doze of
satisfaction. But for the rest of her days she lay luxuriously folded on
herself and sunk in sloth and pleasure. Her invincible content at first
annoyed me, but I came gradually to find repose in the spectacle, until
at last it grew to be my habit to sit down beside her four times in the
day, both coming and going, and to talk with her sleepily, I scarce knew
of what. I had come to like her dull, almost animal neighbourhood; her
beauty and her stupidity so