There
was no speculation, it seemed, in that dull placid countenance, save
what related to ells of cloth and steady money-getting. Beyond his
business, a well-seasoned _puchero_ and an evening game at loto, might
have been supposed to fill up the waking hours and complete the
occupations of the worthy cloth-dealer. His large, low-roofed, and
somewhat gloomy shop was, like himself, of respectable and business-like
aspect, as were also the two pale-faced, elderly clerks who busied
themselves amongst innumerable rolls of cloth, the produce of French and
Segovian looms. Above the shop was his dwelling-house, a strange,
old-fashioned, many-roomed building, with immensely thick walls, long,
winding corridors, ending and beginning with short flights of steps,
apartments panneled with dark worm-eaten wood, lofty ceilings, and queer
quaintly-carved balconies. It was a section of a line of building
forming half the side of a street, and which, in days of yore, had been
a convent of monks. Its former inmates, as the story went, had been any
thing but ascetics in their practices, and at last so high ran the
scandal of their evil doings, that they were fain to leave Pampeluna and
establish themselves in another house of their order, south of the Ebro.
Some time afterwards the convent had been subdivided into
dwelling-houses, and one of these had for many years past been in the
occupation of Basilio the cloth-merchant. Inside and out the houses
retained much of their old conventual aspect, the only alterations that
had been made consisting in the erection of partition walls, the opening
of a few additional doors and windows, and the addition of balconies.
One of the latter was well known to the younger portion of the officers
in garrison at Pampeluna; for there, when the season permitted, the two
pretty, black-eyed daughters of Master Basilio were wont to sit, plying
their needles with a diligence which did not prevent their sometimes
casting a furtive glance into the street, and acknowledging the
salutation of some passing acquaintance or military admirer of their
graces and perfections.

In this house was it that Herrera and the Count had obtained quarters,
and thither, early upon the morrow of their arrival at Pampeluna,
Baltasar was conducted. The passage through the streets of a Carlist
prisoner, whose uniform denoted him to be of rank, had attracted a
little crowd of children and of the idlers ever to be found in Spanish
towns