an accursed miscreant?"
"Cold creature!" answered Ludwig. "Cold, passionless creature, you
understand nothing, you have no sympathy with anything, no sense of the
genial, the imaginative. Don't you see--don't you comprehend how every
description of the most insulting contempt, envious feeling,
wickedness, ill-temper, and avarice of the vilest kind gleam out of the
green, cat's-eyes of that little gypsy abortion--are legible in every
wrinkle of his diabolical-looking face? Yes! I am going to rescue that
beautiful child out of the clutches--the Satanic clutches--of that
brown monster! If I could only have a talk with her, the little
charmer!" "Nothing is easier than that," said Euchar, and he signed to
her to come near.

The girl put the instrument down, came near, and made a reverence,
casting her eyes modestly on the ground. "Mignon!" cried Ludwig.
"Mignon! Sweet, beautiful creature!"

"I am called Emanuela," she said.

"And that horrible ruffian there," Ludwig went on, "where did he steal
you from? How did you get into his clutches, poor thing?"

The girl lifted her eyes, and sending a beaming, serious glance through
and through Ludwig, replied. "I don't understand you, sir. I don't know
what you mean--why you ask me this?"

"You are a Spaniard, my child," Euchar began.

"I am," she answered, her voice trembling. "I am, indeed. You see
me--you hear me. Why should I deny it?"

"Then, of course, you can play the guitar and sing a song?"

She covered her eyes with her hand, and said, in a scarce audible
whisper, "Ah! I should like to play and sing _you_ one. But my songs
are burning hot; and here it is so cold--so cold!

"Do you know," said Euchar, speaking in Spanish, and in a heightened
tone, "the song _Laurel immortal_?"

She clapped her hands, raised her glance to Heaven, tears filled her
eyes; she flew to the table, seized the guitar, sprang, rather than
walked back to the two friends, placed herself before Euchar, and began

"Laurel immortal al gran Palafox,
Gloria da Espana, de Francia terror!"

The expression which she put into this song was indescribable.
From the deepest pain of death there flamed forth the most fiery
enthusiasm--each note seemed to be a lightning flash which must shiver
every ice-covering of the chilled breast. As for Ludwig he was--to use
a familiar expression--ready to jump out of his skin with sheer
rapture. He interrupted her singing with boisterous "B