men throw their capes before them as a carpet over which
to pass? And isn't it false that men slay one another for them?... How
charming! Don't deny all this. It's all so beautiful!..."

Then she would summon to memory all her recollections of that land of
miracles, of that country of legends, in which her forebears had dwelt.
When she was a child her grandmother, Samuel Aboab's wife, would lull
her to sleep reciting to her in a mysterious voice the prodigious events
that always had Castile as their background and always began the same:
"Once upon a time there was a king of Toledo who fell in love with a
beautiful and charming Jewess named Rachel...."

"Toledo!"... As she uttered this name Luna rolled her eyes as in the
vagueness of a dream. The Spanish capital of Israel! The second
Jerusalem! Her noble ancestors, the treasurer of the king and the
miraculous physician, had dwelt there!

"You must have seen Toledo, Don Luis. You surely have been there. How I
envy you!... Very beautiful, isn't it? Vast! Enormous!... Like
London?... Like Paris? Of course not.... But certainly far larger than
Madrid."

And carried away by the enthusiasm of her illusions she forgot all
discretion, questioning Luis about his past. Indubitably he was of the
nobility: his very bearing revealed that. From the very first day she
had seen him, upon learning his name and his nationality, she had
guessed that he was of high origin. A hidalgo such as she had imagined
every man from Spain to be, with something Semitic in his face and in
his eyes, but more proud, with an air of hauteur that was incapable of
supporting humiliations and servility. Perhaps he had a uniform for
festive occasions, a suit of bright colors, braided with gold... and a
sword, a sword!

Her eyes shone with admiration in the presence of this hidalgo from the
land of knights who was dressed as plainly as a shopkeeper of Gibraltar,
yet who could transform himself into a glorious insect of brilliant
hues, armed with a mortal sting. And Aguirre did not disturb her
illusions, answering affirmatively, with all the simplicity of a hero.
Yes; he had a golden costume, that of the consul. He possessed a sword,
which went with his uniform, and which had never been unsheathed.

One sunny morning the pair, quite unconsciously, took the path to the
Alameda. She made anxious inquiries about Aguirre's past, with
indiscreet curiosity, as always happens between persons who feel
themselves a