smiling, the
heavens of a cold blue, and sown with great cloud islands, and the
mountain-sides mapped forth into provinces of light and shadow. A short
walk restored me to myself, and renewed within me the resolve to plumb
this mystery; and when, from the vantage of my knoll, I had seen Felipe
pass forth to his labours in the garden, I returned at once to the
residencia to put my design in practice. The Senora appeared plunged in
slumber; I stood awhile and marked her, but she did not stir; even if my
design were indiscreet, I had little to fear from such a guardian; and
turning away, I mounted to the gallery and began my exploration of the
house.

All morning I went from one door to another, and entered spacious and
faded chambers, some rudely shuttered, some receiving their full charge
of daylight, all empty and unhomely. It was a rich house, on which Time
had breathed his tarnish and dust had scattered disillusion. The spider
swung there; the bloated tarantula scampered on the cornices; ants had
their crowded highways on the floor of halls of audience; the big and
foul fly, that lives on carrion and is often the messenger of death, had
set up his nest in the rotten woodwork, and buzzed heavily about the
rooms. Here and there a stool or two, a couch, a bed, or a great carved
chair remained behind, like islets on the bare floors, to testify of
man's bygone habitation; and everywhere the walls were set with the
portraits of the dead. I could judge, by these decaying effigies, in the
house of what a great and what a handsome race I was then wandering. Many
of the men wore orders on their breasts and had the port of noble
offices; the women were all richly attired; the canvases most of them by
famous hands. But it was not so much these evidences of greatness that
took hold upon my mind, even contrasted, as they were, with the present
depopulation and decay of that great house. It was rather the parable of
family life that I read in this succession of fair faces and shapely
bodies. Never before had I so realised the miracle of the continued
race, the creation and recreation, the weaving and changing and handing
down of fleshly elements. That a child should be born of its mother,
that it should grow and clothe itself (we know not how) with humanity,
and put on inherited looks, and turn its head with the manner of one
ascendant, and offer its hand with the gesture of another, are wonders
dulled for us by repetiti