s tale in a shorter manner, so as to set
further molestation at defiance.

"In one word," resumed he, with a vivacity of utterance foreign to
his Spanish habits of grandiloquence, "at that ball, there appeared
among the dancers of the Coranto, exhibited before the tent of state
of Queen Margaret, a young girl whose tender years seemed to render
the exhibition almost an indiscretion; and whose aerial figure
appeared to make her sojourn there, or any other spot on earth a
matter of wonder. Her dress was simple, her fair hair streamed on her
shoulders. It was one of the angels of your immortal Titian, _minus_
the wings! Such was, at least, the description given me by Don John,
to enable me to ascertain among the Namurrois her name and lineage,
for the satisfaction (he said) of the queen, whose attention had been
fascinated by her beauty."

"And you proceeded, I doubt not, on your errand with all the grace
and good-will I saw you put into your commission of this
morning?"--cried Gonzaga, laughing.

"And nearly the same result!--My answer to the enquiry of his
highness was _verbatim_ the same; that the matter was not worth
asking after. This white rose of the Meuse was not so much as of a
chapteral-house. Some piece of provincial obscurity that had issued
from the shade, to fill a place in the royal Coranto, in consequence
of the indisposition of one of the noble daughters of the house of
Croy. Still, as in the matter of the cow-hunt, his highness had the
malice to persist! And next day, instead of allowing me to attend him
in his barging with the royal Cleopatra of this confounded Cydnus of
Brabant, I was dispatched into all quarters of Namur to seek out a
pretty child with silken hair and laughing eyes, whom some silly
grandam had snatched out of its nursery to parade at a royal
fete.--Holy St Laurence! how my soul grilled within my skin!--I did,
as you may suppose, as much of his highness's pleasure as squared
with my own; and had the satisfaction of informing him, on his
return, that the bird had fled."--

"And there was an end of the matter?"--

"I hoped so! But I am not precisely the confessor his highness is
likely to select when love constitutes the sin. At all events, the
bustle of Margaret's departure for Spa, the care of the royal escort,
and the payment of all that decency required us to take upon
ourselves of the cost of our hospitality, engrossed my time and
thoughts. But the first time the Infant beset