of loveliness," say the Spaniards. They are proud indeed
of Seville, as they are of everything else belonging to them, and of
themselves especially, often with less reason. We must carry the reader
back about three hundred years, to a beautiful mansion not far from the
banks of the famed Guadalquiver. In the interior were two courts, open
to the sky. Round the inner court were marble pillars richly carved and
gilt, supporting two storeys of galleries; and in the centre a fountain
threw up, as high as the topmost walls, a bright jet of water, which
fell back in sparkling spray into an oval tank below, full of
many-coloured fish. In the court, at a sufficient distance from the
fountain to avoid its spray, which, falling around, increased the
delicious coolness of the air, sat a group of ladies employed in working
tapestry, the colours they used being of those bright dyes which the
East alone could at that time supply. The only person who was moving
was a young girl, who was frolicking round the court with a little dog,
enticed to follow her by a coloured ball, which she kept jerking, now to
one side, now to the other, laughing as she did so at the animal's
surprise, in all the joyousness of innocent youth. She had scarcely yet
reached that age when a girl has become conscious of her charms and her
power over the sterner sex. The ladies were conversing earnestly
together, thinking, it was evident, very little of their work, when a
servant appearing announced the approach of Don Gonzales Munebrega,
Bishop of Tarragona. For the peculiar virtues he possessed in the eye
of the supreme head of his Church, he was afterwards made Archbishop of
the same see. Uneasy glances were exchanged among the ladies; but they
had scarcely time to speak before a dignified-looking ecclesiastic
entered the court, followed by two inferior priests.

One of the ladies, evidently the mistress of the house, advanced to meet
him, and after the usual formal salutations had been exchanged, he
seated himself on a chair which was placed for him by her side, at a
distance from the rest of the party, who were joined, however, by the
two priests. The young girl no sooner caught sight of the Bishop from
the farther end of the hall, where the little dog had followed her among
the orange trees, than all trace of her vivacity disappeared.

"Ah, Dona Mercia, your young daughter reminds me greatly of you at the
same age," observed the Bishop, with a si