CHAPTER VI  THE VOICE OF THE SIREN

 Don José, firm friend of the Marquis of Moraima, and related to the best families of Seville, had often talked to Gallardo concerning Doña Sol.

She had returned to Seville only a few months before, arousing the enthusiasm of the young people. She came, after a long absence in foreign lands, eager for everything pertaining to _la tierra_, enjoying the popular customs and finding it all very interesting,"very artistic." She went to the bull-fights arrayed in the ancient costume of a _maja_, imitating the dress and pose of the beautiful women painted by Goya. Strong, accustomed to sports, and a great horsewoman, the people saw her galloping around the outskirts of Seville, wearing with her black riding skirt a man's jacket, a red cravat, and a white beaver hat perched on top of her golden hair. Sometimes she carried a spear across the pommel of the saddle and with a party of friends converted into _piqueros_, she went to the pasture grounds to tease and upset bulls, enjoying this wild festivity, abounding as it did in danger. She was not a child. Gallardo had a confused recollection of having seen her in his youth on the _paseo_ of Delicias, seated beside her mother and covered with white frills, like a luxurious doll in a show-case, while he, a miserable vagabond, dashed under the wheels of the carriage in search of cigar stubs. They were undoubtedly the same age,--she must be at the end of the twenties; but how magnificent! So different from other women! She seemed like an exotic bird, a bird of paradise, fallen into a farmyard among mere shiny, well fed hens.

Don José knew her history. An eccentric mind had Doña Sol! Her mother was dead and she had a considerable fortune. She had married in Madrid a certain man older than herself, who offered to a woman eager for splendor and novelty the advantages of travelling about the world as the wife of an ambassador who represented Spain at the principal courts.

"The way that girl has amused herself, Juan!" said the manager."The heads she has turned in ten years from one end of Europe to the other! She must be a regular geography with secret notes at the foot of each page. Surely she cannot look at the map without making a little cross of memory near all the great capitals. And the poor ambassador! He died, of despondency, no doubt, because there was no longer any place to which he could be sent. The good gentleman, accredited to represent our country, would go to a court and inside of a year, behold! the queen or the empress of that land was writing to Spain asking the minister to retire the ambassador and his dreaded consort, whom the newspapers called 'the irresistible Spanish woman.' The crowned heads that _gachí_ has turned! Queens trembled when they saw her come, as if she were the Asiatic cholera. At last the poor ambassador saw no other place for his talents but the republics of America, bu