o their very bones, and while the fountains
of Versailles were playing among their marble nymphs, and the
courtiers of Louis XIV. were decked like butterflies in their
multi-coloured garments, as shameless as pagans among the beautiful
goddesses, the court of Spain, dressed in black, with a rosary hanging
at its girdle, assisted at the burnings and, girt with the green scarf
of the holy office, honoured itself by undertaking the duties of
alguacil at the bonfires of heretics. While humanity, warmed by the
soft breath of the Renaissance, was admiring the Apollos and adoring
the Venus' discovered by the plough amid the ruins of mediaeval
catastrophes, the type of supreme beauty for the Spanish monarchy
was the criminal of Judea. The black and dusty Christs in the old
cathedrals, with the livid mouth, the skeleton and distorted body, the
feet bony, and dripping with blood, much blood,--that liquid so loved
by the religious when doubt begins and faith weakens, and to impose
dogma they place their hand on the sword.

"For this reason the Spanish monarchy has been steeped in gloom,
transmitting its melancholy from one generation to another. If by any
chance there appeared among them anyone happy and pleased with life,
it was because in the blue blood of the maternal veins there was a
plebeian drop, which pierced like the rays of the sun into a sick
room."

Don Luis listened to Gabriel, receiving his words with affirmative
gestures.

"Yes, we are a people governed by gloom," said the musician. "The
sombre humour of those dark centuries lives in us still. I have often
thought how difficult life must have been to an awakened spirit. The
Inquisition listening to every word, and endeavouring to guess every
thought. The conquest of heaven the sole ideal of life! And that
conquest becoming daily more difficult! Money must be paid to the
Church to save one's self, and poverty was the most perfect state; and
again, besides the sacrifice of all comfort, prayers at all hours,
the daily visits to the church, the life of confraternities, the
disciplines in the vaults of the parish church, the voice of the
brother of Mortal Sin interrupting sleep to remind one of the approach
of Death; and added to this fanatical and weary life the uncertainty
of salvation, the threat of falling into hell for the slightest fault,
and the impossibility of ever thoroughly appeasing a sullen and
revengeful God. And then again, the more tangible menace, th