d she would never see him more. A
marriage with the Don was urged, she resisted--the alternative was a
convent! In pity she implored a short delay, and then convinced that her
lover had suffered from her cruel parents' jealousy, gave the vows of
her broken heart to the church. And that music is her requiem, and his
too! For after those vows had been pronounced, and the black veil had
shut out hope for ever, a haggard youth was released from confinement,
of whose few and ill-starred years the turbid waters of the Pasig soon
washed away all trace.

Poor Maraquita! Poor Carlos! I know not whose fate the most to deplore--

"The one to end in madness,
Both in misery."

With the narrator of this sad tale of passion and despair, I dropped a
tear to their memory, thinking how truly the poet of all time has
written--

"The course of true love never did run smooth."

The foregoing was not related at the time, but afterwards, by a young
Spanish gentleman, who had taken some pains to enable us to witness the
ceremony. I had hardly expected to hear a serious story from his lips,
for his appearance was reckless and gay, and I had associated him in my
mind with the character of Don Caesar de Bazan, as I had seen it
illustrated.

He introduced us further into the convent than I would have ventured
upon my own responsibility--appeared at home with all the priests
towards whom his manner conveyed but little reverence--and inquiring if
we had any desire to see the nuns, went up to an opening in which there
was a revolving frame, and asked for the Lady Superior. The lady mother
soon presented her round and not unhandsome form at a door to the right,
and in choice Italian demanded our business. With much _nonchalance_ Don
C. expressed a desire to pay his respects to the ladies under her
charge, especially to the one just admitted. His coolness somewhat
disconcerted the supreme lady Abbess, to whom such a request had never
before been preferred, I warrant, and her black eyes sparkled with
scarcely a _holy_ fire, as she answered this time in Spanish, and in the
tone of dignity which that language can convey so well, "That the nuns
were in their place, and the new one did not receive company, especially
that of such gay cavaliers," and intimated that in attending to their
duties they set an example which would be well followed by those
cavaliers.

Don Caesar, his _sang froid_ still retaining its temperature, with the
grav