ons we had to offer to so fair and pious a princess were,
first a _Te Deum_ in the cathedral for her safe journey; next, an
entertainment of dancing and music at the town hall--and a gallant
affair it was, as far as silver draperies, and garlands of roses, and
a blaze of light that seemed to threaten the conflagration of the
city, may be taken in praise. The queen had brought with her, as with
_malice prepense_, six of the loveliest ladies of honour gracing the
court of the Louvre"--

"I _knew_ it!"--again interrupted Gonzaga;--and again did Nignio
gravely enquire of him whether (since so well informed) he would be
pleased to finish the history in his own way?

"Your pardon! your pardon!" cried the Italian, laying his finger on
his lips. "Henceforward I am mute as a carp of the Meuse."

"It afforded, therefore, some mortification to this astutious
princess,--this daughter of Herodias, with more than all her mother's
cunning and cruelty in her soul,--to perceive that the Spanish
warriors, who on that occasion beheld for the first time the
assembled nobility of Brabant and Namur, were more struck by the
Teutonic charms of these fair-haired daughters of the north, (so
antipodal to all we are accustomed to see in our sunburned
provinces,) than by the mannered graces of her pleasure-worn Parisian
belles."--

"Certain it is," observed Gonzaga, (despite his recent pledge,) "that
there is no greater contrast than between our wild-eyed, glowing
Andalusians, and the slow-footed, blue-eyed daughters of these
northern mists, whose smiles are as moonshine to sunshine!"

"After excess of sunshine, people sometimes prefer the calmer and
milder radiance of the lesser light. And I promise you that, at this
moment, if there be pillows sleepless yonder in the camp for the sake
of the costly fragile toys called womankind, those jackasses of
lovelorn lads have cause to regret the sojourn of Queen Margaret in
Belgium, only as having brought forth from their castles in the
Ardennes or the froggeries of the Low Country, the indigenous
divinities that I would were at this moment at the bottom of their
muddy moats, or of the Sambre flowing under yonder window!"--

"It is one of these Brabancon belles, then, who"--

Gabriel Nignio de Zuniga half rose from his chair, as a signal for
breaking off the communication he was not allowed to pursue in his
own way.--Taking counsel of himself, however, he judged that the
shorter way was to tell hi