Chapter VI: Masters and Slaves (6)

But no one dared throw himself at the horses’ heads; for they tore along at such a furious rate that to rush at them was to rush into eternity.

Juan, enraged at the cowardice of the other workmen, and moved by his love for the emperor as well as his natural propensity to do good without looking at the person to whom he did it, threw himself at the horses’ heads, and succeeded in stopping the coach, to the admiration of the emperor himself, who at that moment would not have given a brass farthing for his life.

“Ask whatever you like,” said the emperor to him, “for everything appears to me small as a recompense to the man who has rendered me so signal a service.”

“Sire!” said Juan to him, “I, under present circumstances, am a poor day laborer, and the day that I don’t gain a couple of _pesetas_ my wife and I have to fast. So, if your majesty will only assure me my day’s labor whether it rains or whether it is fine weather, my wife and I will sing our lives away in happiness, for we are people content with very little.”

“That’s pretty clear. Well, go along, it’s granted. The day that you have nothing to do anywhere else, go to one of my palaces, whichever you like, and occupy yourself there in whatever way you please.”

“Thank you, sire!”

“What! No; no reason for thanks, man. That is a mere nothing.”

The emperor went on his road happy enough, and Juan went on his, thinking of the great joy he was about to give his wife when he returned home at night, and told her that he had his day’s work secured for the rest of his life whether it rained or was fine weather.

In fact, his wife was greatly rejoiced when he carried her the good news. They supped, and went to bed in peace and in the grace of God, and Juan slept like one of the blessed; but Ramona passed the whole night turning about in the bed like one who has some trouble or desire that will not let him sleep.

“Do you know what I have been thinking the whole night long, Juan?” said Ramona, the following morning.

“What?”

“That yesterday you were a fool to ask so little from the emperor.”

“Indeed! What more had I to ask?”

“That he would give us a little house to live in, something more suitable and decent than this wretched stable.”

“You are right, woman; but now there is no help for it.”

“Perhaps there may be.”

“How?”

“Look here; go and see the emperor, and ask him.”

“Yes; now is the time to go on such an errand!”

“Go you shall, and quickly, too!”

“But, woman, don’t get angry. My goodness! what a temper you have! Well, well; I will go, and God grant his majesty does not send me off with a flea in my ear, although, under present circumstances, he is a very open‐ hearted, outspoken gentleman.”

Well, Juan set out for the palace of the emperor; and the emperor granted him an audience immediately on his arrival.

“Hallo, Juan!” said his majesty. “What brings you this way, man?”

“Sire!” replied Juan, twirling and twirling the hat which he held in his hand, “my wife, under present circumstances, is as good as gold; but, you see, the stable that we live in is gone to rack and ruin, and we wish to get it out of our sight. So she said to me this morning: ‘If your majesty, who is so kind, would only give us a little house, something better than the one we have, who dare sneeze at us then?’ ”

“Does your wife want nothing more than that? Well, it’s granted. This very moment I will give orders that they place the little white house at her disposal. Go into the dining‐room, and take a mouthful and a drop of something; and, instead of going afterwards to the stable, go to the little white house, and there you will find your wife already installed.”

Juan returned thanks to the emperor for his latest kindness, and, passing on to the dining‐room, filled himself with ham and wine.

Our friend commenced his journey home, and, when he arrived at the white house, his wife rushed out to receive him with tears of joy.

And indeed it was very natural for poor Ramona to find herself so merry, for the little white house was a perfect jewel. It occupied the summit of a gentle acclivity, whence the whole beauty of the plain was spread out before it. A large Muscatel vine covered the whole of the porch, and beneath it there were seats and little plots of pinks and roses. The apartments of the house were a little drawing‐room, very white, and clean, and pretty, with its chairs, its cupboard, and its looking‐glass; an alcove with its bed, so soft and clean and beautiful that the emperor himself might have slept in it; a little kitchen with all its requirements, among which were included the utensils, which shone like gold; and a little bewitching dining‐room, with four chairs, a table, and a sideboard. To the dining‐room there was a fairy entrance, adorned without by an arc of flowers, and through this entrance you passed into a garden, where there were fruits, and flowers, and vegetables, and a small army of chickens clucked; and every egg they laid was as big as Juan’s fist.

When night came on, Juan and Ramona took their supper like a couple of princes in their little dining‐room, and soon after laid them down in their beautiful bed. They both slept well, particularly Juan, who stirred neither hand nor foot the whole night through.

Ramona began to find fault the very next day, and Juan noticed that every night her sleep was more disturbed.

“Woman, what the devil is the matter with you, that all night long you are twisting like a reel?” asked Juan, one morning. “Why, there are no fleas here as there were in the stable.”

“Fleas hinder my sleep very little.”

“Well, then, what hinders it, woman?”

“What hinders it? Your stupidity in asking the emperor so little hinders it.”

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son!... And you still think it little that I have asked, and he granted us?”

“Yes, indeed I do. This little house is so small that one can scarcely turn in it; and if to‐morrow or some other day we have children, what shall we do with them in a hut like this?”

“Say what you like about it, there is no help for it now.”

“Perhaps there may be.”

“And how, I should like to know?”

“Going back and seeing his majesty, and telling him to give us a larger house, of course.”

“Go to Jericho, woman. You don’t catch me going on an errand of that kind!”

“Well, go you shall, then; or we’ll see who is master here.”

“But, wife, don’t you see that my very face would drop from me with shame?”

“Now, that’s enough of talk on the matter. All you have to do is, run along to the palace as fast as you can, if you care to have a quiet time of it.”

“Well, well; since you wish it, I’ll go.”

Juan, who did not possess an ounce of will of his own—a thing which is the greatest misfortune that can befall a husband who is not blessed with such a wife as God ordained for him—set out once more on his road towards the palace of the emperor.

“Indeed,” said he to himself, with more fear than shame, “it is very possible he will send me down‐stairs head foremost, because it is only natural that this abuse of his good‐nature will prove too much, even for him. And it will serve me right for my unfortunate weakness of character.”

Juan’s fears were not realized. So soon as he sought an audience with his majesty it was granted, and the emperor asked him, with a smiling face:

“How goes it at the little white house?”

“Not badly, sire!”

“And your wife, how does she find herself there?”

“Not badly, sire, but your majesty knows what the women are. Give ’em an inch, they’ll take an ell. My wife, under present circumstances, hasn’t a flaw in her; but she says that, if to‐morrow or the day after we have youngsters, we shall all be crowded there like bees in a bottle.”

“You are right. So she wants, of course, a house a little larger?”

“You’ve just hit it, sire!”

“Well, turn into the dining‐room till they give you a snack of something; and, instead of returning to the white house, go to the Azure Palace, where you will find your wife installed with the attendance befitting those who live in a palace.”

Juan returned the emperor thanks for his great goodness, and, after stuffing himself till he looked like a ball in the dining‐room, off he set, as happy as could be, to the Azure Palace, which was one of those that the emperor had in that district.

The Azure Palace was neither very large nor furnished with great wealth; but it was very beautiful and adorned with becoming elegance. A servant in livery received Juan at the door and conducted him to the apartment of the lady. The lady was Ramona, whom her maid had just finished dressing in one of the beautiful robes which she found in her new dwelling. Juan could do nothing but open his mouth and stare in amazement at seeing his wife in such majestic attire.

Juan and Ramona feared they would go mad when they found themselves lords of a palace, well fitted, elegant, and waited on by four servants: namely, a coachman, a footman, a maid, and a cook.

“Take off that clown’s dress,” said Ramona to Juan. “Aren’t you ashamed to show yourself in such a trim before our own servants?”

“This is a new start,” said Juan, astonished at the sally of his wife. “So I, who, under present circumstances, have passed all my life in digging the earth, and things even worse than that, must feel ashamed of the clothes I have worn all my life long!”

“But, you stupid head,” replied Ramona, “if you have costume corresponding to your rank, why didn’t you put it on?”

“My rank!... Come, this woman’s head is turned.”

“Juan, go to your apartment and change your things, and don’t try my patience so much, for you know already that my temper will not stand too great a trial.”

“Well, there’s no need to put yourself out, woman. Here I’m going now,” said Juan, turning to the room from which he saw Ramona come out.

“Blockhead!” said she, catching hold of him and showing him another room, “this apartment is mine, and that is yours.”

“Hallo! this is another surprise. So my wife’s room is not mine also?”

“No; that is only among common folk; but in people of our rank no.”

Juan gave up the dispute, and, entering the room which she had pointed out as his, found therein a wardrobe with a quantity of fine changes befitting a gentleman, and came out again transformed into a milord.

There passed fifteen days since Juan and Ramona came to live in the Azure Palace, and Ramona grew day by day more captious, and slept less and less every night.

“What the deuce ails you? One would think the ants were at you,” said Juan to her, one morning.

“What ails me is that I have the biggest fool for a husband that ever ate bread.”

“Hey for the sweet tempers! So you are not yet content with the sweet little fig that your husband gathered for you?”

“No, sir, I am not. One must be a dolt like you to content herself with what we have, when we might have much more only for the asking.”

“But, woman alive, have you lost your senses? Can the emperor grant us more than he has granted us, or do we need more to make us happy?”

“Yes, he can give us more, and we need it.”

“Explain yourself, and the devil take the explanation, for you’re going to drive me mad with your ambition.”

“Explain myself! I’ll explain myself, and very clearly, too; for, thank God, there are no hairs on my tongue to prevent me speaking to anybody, even to the emperor himself. To make you happy, all that is wanting is what common folk want—a good table where you may stuff yourself with turkey all the day long; but for us who have higher aims, we want something more than chunks of meat and wine that would make an ox dance a hornpipe. You can swell yourself out and look big when you walk out here, and hear them calling you Don Juan; but as for me, I could eat myself with rage when they call me Doña Ramona.”

“Well, and isn’t it better for them to call us that than Juan and Ramona, as they used to call us before? What more do you want, woman?”

“I want them to call me lady marchioness.”

“Have you lost your ears, Ramona? Now I tell you, and tell you again, that that wicked ambition of yours has deprived you of your senses.”

“Look here, Juan, you and I are not going into disputes and obstinacy. You know me well enough already, or if you don’t you ought to, to be certain that it doesn’t take long for my nose to itch. I want to be no less than the Marchioness of Radishe and the Countess of Cabbidge, who at every turn fill their mouths with their grand titles, and, when they meet one, don’t seem to have time to say with their drawling affectation, ‘Adios, Doña Ramona.’ Now, since the emperor has told you, when you saved his life, that you might ask him even for the shirt that he had on his back, go and see him, and ask him to make us Marquises.”

“Go and ask him if he has a head on his shoulders, why don’t you say? But there’s enough about it. Even in fun I don’t like to hear such nonsense.”

“Juan, don’t provoke me; take care that I don’t send you with a flea in your ear.”

“But, woman alive, however much of your husband’s breeches you may wear, could you even imagine that I was going to agree to this new start of yours?”

“I bet you, you will agree.”

“I tell you I am not going again to see the emperor.”

“Go you shall, though you have to go on your head.”

“But, wife, don’t be a fool—”

“Come, come; less talk, and run along.”

“Well, I’m going, then, since you are so anxious about it. The saints protect me, if I don’t deserve to be shot for this chicken‐hearted weakness of character!”

Juan took the road to the court, and solicited a new audience with the emperor. Though he took it for certain that his majesty would send him to Old Nick if he did not throw him to him over the balcony, he found that his majesty was very ready to grant him an audience.

“Sire, your majesty will pardon so many impertinences—” he stammered out, full of shame, when he drew near the emperor.

“Why, man, don’t be ashamed and a fool,” interrupted his majesty kindly. “Well, how goes it in the Azure Palace?”

“Beautifully, sire.”

“And how is that little rib of yours, eh?”

“Who—she? Oh! very well, under present circumstances.”

“And content with her lot? Is it not so?”

“Well, as for that, sire! Well, your majesty knows what the women are. Their mouths are like a certain place I wouldn’t mention before your majesty, always open, and there’s no getting at the bottom of it.”

“Well, and what does the good Doña Ramona ask now?”

“What, sire? But there—one is ashamed to say it.”

“Go on, man; out with it, and don’t be bashful. To the man that saved my life I’d give anything, even the crown I wear.”

“Well, then, sire! She wants to be a marchioness.”

“A marchioness! Is that all? Then from this instant she is the Marchioness of Marville.”

“Thank you, sire.”

“Keep the thanks for your wife; and look into the dining‐room to see if there is anything to lay hands on. And when you go back you will find your wife already installed in the palace belonging to her title, for the Azure Palace is not good enough for marquises.”

Juan passed into the dining‐room, and, after running the danger of bursting, he made his way for the palace of Marville. The palace of Marville was not such a very great wonder as its name might lead one to believe; but, for all that, one might very well pass his life in it!

A crowd of footmen and porters received Juan at the gates of the palace, addressing him as my lord marquis; and Juan, for all his modesty, could not but feel a little inflated with such a reception and such a title.

But there was nothing to hold the pride of his wife (though one might be as big as the bell of Toledo, under which one day there sat down seven tailors and a shoemaker) at hearing herself called by her maids lady marchioness here, and lady marchioness there.

“Well, so you are at last content, wife?” said Juan to her.

“Yes, of course, I am. And indeed it was very provoking to hear one’s self called Doña Ramona, short like, as though one were only the wife of the apothecary or the surgeon. You see the truth of what I have said; if one has only to open her mouth in order to be a marchioness, why shouldn’t she? Now you see that his majesty did not eat you for asking such a reasonable thing.”

“Well, do you know, now, that it cost me something to ask it of him?”

“Ah! get out of that; men are good for nothing.”

“But it gave me more courage when his majesty said to me: ‘Don’t be bashful, man; for to the man that saved my life I’d give even the crown I wear.’ ”

“Whew! so he said that to you?”

“As sure as I’m here.”

“Then why didn’t you ask him more?”

“There we are again! What more had I to ask?”

“You are right; for, as somebody said, ‘there are more days than long sausages,’ and

‘A horse and a friend
No work can spend.’ ”

On the following day the Marquis and Marchioness of Marville took a turn in their grandest coach, and it was a sight to see how they rolled along, at every hour in the day, all around those parts, the very wheels seeming to say envy! envy! to the Marchioness of Radishe and the Countess of Cabbidge. Some little trouble took place on account of the actions and complaints of the country folk, who prevented them from passing in their coach over this and that road, or by this and that property. But the marchioness quite forgot all these annoyances when, for example, at meeting the wife of the apothecary or surgeon, she said to them from her coach wherein she reclined in all her glory, “Adios, Doña Fulana,” and the other answered her, trotting along on foot, “Good‐by, my lady marchioness.”

After some time the marquis thought he noticed that his wife was not perfectly happy, because he found her every day more capricious, and she never slept quietly.

One morning, when the day was already advanced, the marquis slept away like a dormouse, and the marchioness, who had passed a more restless and sleepless night than ever, lay awake at his side impatiently waiting for him to awake.

“S. Swithin! what a sleeper!” exclaimed the marchioness; and, no longer able to restrain her impatience, she gave her husband a tremendous pinch, and said, “Wake up, brute.”

“Oh! ten thousand d——!” yelled the marquis.

“Are you not ashamed to sleep so much?”

“Ashamed! of something so natural? More ashamed should the one be who does not sleep, for sleeplessness bespeaks an unquiet conscience. What the devil is the matter with you that you have not ceased the whole night from turning and twisting about?”

“Yes, indeed, if one only had a soul as broad‐shouldered as you.”

“I don’t understand you, woman.”

“Well, then, you shall understand me, blockhead though you are. Now, tell me, Juan, an emperor is greater than a king?”

“Why shouldn’t he be?”

“That is to say, that emperors can make kings?”

“I think so. For instance, suppose his majesty the emperor wished to say to us, ‘Ha, my good friends the Marquis and Marchioness of Marville, I convert the province of Micomican, which belongs to me, into a kingdom, and I make you the monarchs of my new kingdom,’ I believe nobody could hinder it.”

“Very well, then; I wish his majesty to say and do this at your petition.”

The very house seemed to fall atop of Juan at hearing this from his wife; but this latest caprice of Ramona was so absurd that he had courage to hope in its all being a joke.

“Don’t you think his majesty would give the person a nice slap in the face who was so impudent and barefaced as to go to him with such a petition as this?” he said.

“If you go, he will not; since he has said that he cannot deny even his crown to the man who saved his life. So go along, ducky, hurry and see his majesty.”

“But you mean this?”

“Why shouldn’t I mean it? I have a nice temper for jokes! I want to be queen, in order to let those little folks know their proper places, who pass their lives in digging the earth and eating potatoes, and have the impudence to dare face gentlefolk who condescend to pass wherever they please.”

“Well, well, now it’s clear that you have lost your wits altogether!”

“What you are going to lose, since you have no wits, is your teeth, with a slap in the face, if you don’t make haste and hurry off to the court.”

“I’d lose my head before I’d commit such an absurdity. There. I’ve given way enough already.”

“Indeed! Then from this day forward know that you have no longer a wife. This is my room, and you shall never set foot in it again, nor I in yours.”

“But, woman!”

“No, no; remember we are strangers to each other.”

“Come, don’t be obstinate, my own Ramonita.”

“Don’t I tell you, sir, that all is over between us?”

“Now, look here, pigeon.”

“Stop your prate!”

“The dev—! Well, come, you shall be satisfied; I will go and see his majesty, and tell him that you want to be queen, though I know he will shoot me on the spot.”

Ramona bestowed a caress on her husband in reward for his consent, and our good Juan made his way to the court cursing his own foolish weakness of character.

Contrary to his expectations, the emperor hastened to grant him an audience, and received him with the accustomed smile.

“Well, marquis, what is it?” he asked.

“What ought it to be, sire? A fresh impertinence.”

“Come, out with it man, and don’t be bashful. Something concerning the marchioness, eh?”

“You’ve hit it again, sire. These foolish women are never content.”

“Well, what does yours want?”

“Nothing, sire. She says, would it please your majesty to make her queen?”

“Queen! nothing more than that? Well, she is queen already, then. Now, go into the dining‐room, and see if there is anything there you can destroy; and, instead of returning to the palace of Marville, go to the palace of the Crown, where you will find your wife installed as becomes the Queen of Micomican.”

Juan outdid himself in thanks and courtesies, and, after treating himself in the dining‐rooms right royally, made his way home. On his arrival at the palace of the Crown, a salvo of artillery announced his coming. The troops were drawn up around the palace, where he entered to the sound of the Royal March, and amid the _vivas_ of the people, who became mad in the presence of the husband of their new sovereign.

Her Majesty, the Queen Doña Ramona the First, was holding a levée at the moment when her august spouse arrived at the palace, and he, seating himself by her side, gave also his royal hand to kiss; but it was so dirty that as many as kissed it hurried out of the chamber spitting. To be king, it is necessary to keep the hands very clean.

The King and Queen of Micomican amused themselves mightily during the first weeks of their reign: so that all was feasting and rejoicing in celebration of their happy coming to the throne. But so soon as the festival passed, the Queen Doña Ramona began to grow sad and weary.

The king summoned the chief physician of the court, and held a deep consultation with him.

“Man alive,” said he to him, “I have summoned you in order to see what the devil you have to say to me touching the sorrow and evil state in which I have noticed my august spouse to be for some time past. She is always turning and twisting about in her bed, so that she neither sleeps herself nor lets me sleep, and the worst part of it is, that every day she is sadder, and everything irritates and exasperates her.”

“Well, sire, in the first place, we must please her in everything and by everything.”

“I agree with you there, man; but there are things beyond human power. If it rains, she is put out because it rains; if it blows, she is put out because it blows; if we are in the winter, she is put out because the spring has not come, and her mind is so turned that she cries out: ‘I command it not to rain,’ ‘I command it not to blow,’ ‘I command the spring to come at once.’ Now, you see that it is only by being God one can secure obedience of orders like these. Well, then, to what the deuce do you attribute these whims of my august spouse?”

“Sire, it is very possible that they may presage a happy event.”

“Ah, ah! I take you. Well, to be sure, and I never thought of such a thing. And wouldn’t it be a joy to me and to my august spouse to find ourselves with a direct successor? For, if not, there is no use in deluding ourselves: the day that we close our eyes, in comes civil war, and the kingdom is gone to Old Nick.”

So the Queen Doña Ramona remained watching to see what would happen. But months and months passed, and the queen grew every day sadder and more capricious.

One day the king decided on interrogating very seriously the queen herself, to see if he might draw from her the secret of her sadness and capriciousness.

“Well, let us know, now, what the deuce is the matter with you,” he said, “that you neither sleep nor let me sleep, and remain for ever like the thorn of S. Lucy.”

“I am very unhappy,” answered the queen, beginning to weep like a Magdalen.

“You unhappy?—you who lived in a stable as empty and bare as that which Our Lord lived in when he became man, and under present circumstances you find yourself the somebody of somebodies, a queen clean and complete? What the deuce do you want?”

“It is true, I am a queen. But I die of sadness when from the throne I look back and see nothing of what other queens see.”

“Well, and what do other queens see?”

“For instance, the Queen of Spain sees a series of great and glorious kings, named Recaredo, Pelayo, San Fernando, Alonso the Wise, Isabel the Catholic, Ferdinand the Catholic, Charles V., Philip II., Charles III.—and those kings had blood of hers, and seated themselves on the throne, and loved and made great the people that she loves and makes great.”

“You are right, wife. But you wish to do what is impossible, and that God alone can do.”

“Well, then, those impossibilities are the very things that tease and exasperate me. What is the use of being a queen, if even in the most just desires one sees herself constrained, and unable to realize them? It is a fine afternoon, for instance, and I begin to get ready to go out for a walk in the palace gardens, but a wretched little cloud appears in the sky, as though to say to one, ‘Don’t get ready!’ And when one wishes to go out, that insolent cloud begins to pour down water, and one is obliged to remain at home, disgusted and fretting. What I want is to have power enough to prevent a miserable little cloud from laughing at me.”

“But, woman, don’t I tell you that this power God alone can have?”

“Then I want to be God.”

Juan made the sign of the cross on himself, filled with shame and horror at hearing his wife give utterance to such a thing, whose head was undoubtedly turned by the demon of ambition. But he did not wish to exasperate the poor crazed being with lessons which, had she been in her right senses, she would have deserved.

“But don’t you know, child,” he said to her with sweetness, “that the fulfilment of that desire is as impossible as it is foolish? The emperor has granted us whatever we have asked, but what you want now he cannot grant.”

“Still, I want you to go and see him, and say so to him; for perhaps between him and the Pope they will be able to manage it.”

“But if there is and never can be more than one God, how can you be made God?”

“I have always heard say that God can do everything. If the emperor consults with the Pope, and the Pope has recourse to God, then you’ll see if God, who can do everything, will disappoint them both.”

“But if God cannot?”

“Hold your tongue, Jew, and don’t say such awful things. God can do everything.”

Juan thought it would be more prudent to abstain from contradicting his wife any further. So he retired and summoned the chief physician of the court, in order to lay before him the new and extraordinary phase which the moral malady of the queen displayed. The physician said that in his long professional career he had met with cases of mental aberration even more extraordinary than that of the queen; and insisted that, far from contradicting the august invalid, they should comply with her every wish as far as it was humanly possible.

The king returned soon after to the chamber of his august spouse, who the moment she saw him became a perfect wasp.

“How, sire?” she exclaimed. “So you are the first to disobey my orders?”

“How disobey?”

“Yes, sire! Did I not tell you that I want you to go and see the emperor, and implore him to place himself in communication with the Pope in order to see whether between them they could so manage that I might be God?”

“Yes, you told me so, but—”

“There are no buts for me. How is it that you are not already on the road to comply with my orders? Now, none of your nice little jokes with me, if you please—you, who are no more than the husband of the queen—and, if you ruffle my feathers, I’ll send you off to be hanged as soon as look at you.”

“Come, child, don’t be angry, you shall be obeyed instantly.”

“Remember, none of your pranks, now! And listen: go and tell that health‐ killer whom you seem to have made one of your council, that if you don’t go to see the emperor, and perform in every point the commission which I charge you with, he shall serve you as partner in your dance in the air.”

The king withdrew; and when he reported to the chief physician what his wife had just said to him, the physician insisted more than ever on the necessity of pleasing the august invalid in everything.

So the king set out on his journey to the imperial court. The extravagant and impious nature of his mission disturbed him greatly; but the consideration gave him comfort that he was no longer a Juan nobody, as on other occasions when he had made the same journey, but a monarch about to consult with another monarch. The only thing that weighed at all on his mind was the question of etiquette.

“I don’t know,” said he, “for the life of me what shoes to tread in when I address the emperor. I have heard it said that all we sovereigns call each other cousins, though not a bit of cousinship exists between us: but how do I know, if I call the emperor cousin, that he may not give me a blow that would send all the teeth down my throat?” Occupied with such thoughts, he arrived at the imperial court, and the emperor hastened to receive him when he had scarcely set foot in the palace.

“How is her majesty, Queen Doña Ramona?” asked the emperor kindly.

“Bad enough, under present circumstances.”

“Man, that is the worst news yet! And what ails her?”

“What the devil do I know? The evil one alone understands these women. If your majesty could only guess the commission she has given me—”

“Hallo, hallo! Well, let us hear it.”

“She says—but pshaw! One is ashamed to say it. She says to see if your majesty could consult with the Pope, and between you manage to make her God.”

“Eh! That is a greater request. Make her God, eh!”

“Your majesty sees already that it is a piece of madness; for a woman can’t complain of the small advance in her career who to‐day is a queen, and not a year ago lived in a stable. A stable is a disgrace to nobody, sure enough; for, after all, Our Lord, though he was God, lived in one when he made himself man.”

“So the good Doña Ramona wishes to be God, eh!”

“You’ve hit it, your majesty.”

“Well, we will please her as far as we are able. Let your majesty step into the dining‐room and drive the wolf from the door, and on returning you will find your wife, if not changed into God, changed into something which is like to him.”

The royal consort turned into the dining‐room, but, do what he would, he could scarcely swallow a mouthful. Everything seemed to disagree with him, and the cause of it lay in his feeling within him a restlessness which seemed to forebode some misfortune. He made his way homewards, and on arriving at the palace of the crown he saw, with as great sorrow as dismay, that the palace was closed and deserted.

“What has happened here?” he inquired of a passer‐by.

“The emperor has put an end to the kingdom of Micomican, re‐establishing the ancient province, and re‐incorporating it with the empire.”

Juan had neither courage nor strength to ask more. He wandered about for hours and hours like one demented without knowing whither, when suddenly he found himself at the door of the stable where he had lived with his wife, and on pushing open the door, which revolved on its hinges, he found his wife installed there once more. The only thing Godlike which the woman who had entertained the criminal ambition of becoming like to him, consisted in the similarity of her dwelling to the stable which God occupied when he became man.

The Distaff.

“In der guten alten Zeit wo die Königen Bertha spann.”

“In the good old times when Queen Bertha span” is a thrifty proverb still current in France and some parts of Germany where the distaff is yet seen beneath the arm of the shepherdess, looking, as she tends her flock, precisely like S. Genevieve just stept out from her canvas, or that more modern saint of the hidden life, Germaine of Pibrac, who is always represented with her spindle and distaff. In the very same fields where S. Germaine watched her flocks and twirled her spindle in the old scriptural way, keeping her innocent heart all the while united to God, have we seen the young shepherdess clad in the picturesque scarlet or white capuchon of the country, which covers their heads and half veils their forms—guarding their sheep and spinning at the same time.

And the same womanly implement is sometimes found in the hands of those of gentle birth in those old lands where so many still cling to the traditions of the past. We read of the now world‐famous Eugénie de Guérin that the same hand that wrote such charmingly naïve letters and journals did not disdain the spindle and the distaff. She writes thus in her journal: “I have begun my day by fitting myself up a distaff, very round, very firm, and very smart with its bow of ribbon. There, I am going to spin with a small spindle. One must vary work and amusements: tired of a stocking, I take up my needle and then my distaff. So time passes, and carries us away on its wings.” And again a day or two after: “I took my distaff by way of diversion, but all the while I was spinning, my mind spun and wound and turned its spindle at a fine rate. I was not at my distaff. The soul just sets that kind of mechanical work going and then leaves it.”

This reminds us of Uhland’s verse:

“Long, long didactic poems
I spin with busy wheel,
The lengthened yarns of epic
Keep running off my reel:

“My wheel itself has a lyrical whirr,
My cat has a tragic mew,
While my spindle plays the comic parts
And does the dancing too.”

Eugénie’s charming Arcadian life, passed in the primitive occupations of spinning, sewing, superintending the kitchen—even going, like Homer’s Nausicaa, to the margin of the stream to wash the linen in the running waters, and afterwards taking pleasure in spreading it all white on the green grass, or seeing it wave on the lines: all this, we say, without detracting from the poetry and grace of her nature, is enough to make us recall with a sigh the good old days when Queen Bertha span.

And this queen was _Berthe au grand pied_, the mother of Charlemagne, who had one foot larger than the other, and hence her name:

“You are the beautiful Bertha, the spinner, queen of Helvetia,
She whose story I read at a stall in the streets of Southampton,
Who, as she rode on her palfrey o’er valley and meadow and
mountain,
Ever was spinning her thread from a distaff fixed to her saddle.
She was so thrifty and good, that her name passed into a proverb.”

Whether this Queen of Helvetia is our Bertha with the great foot we know not. The name is found in many curious old legends like the German one of Frau Bertha, a kind of tutelar genius of spinners, with an immense foot and a long iron nose, which doubtless served as a spindle. And an old manuscript, long hidden in some obscure corner of a German monastery, tells how King Pepin, wishing to wed the fair Bertha of Brittany, sent his chief officers to bring her to his court. The steward, who had charge of the escort, was not without ambitious views respecting his own daughter. He ordered his servants to put Bertha to death on the way. But they, instead of killing her, left her in a forest. Not long after—O happy chance!—King Pepin, overtaken by night while hunting, awaited the dawn in a house where he was served by the most beautiful maid his eyes had ever beheld. Of course it was Bertha with her great foot, which, we may be sure, she gracefully concealed beneath her flowing garments. And so they were married. Old poems sing of her industry, and tell us she knew how to spin like the princesses of scriptural and Homeric days. She is represented, too, on old coins seated on a throne with a distaff in her hands. All writers speak of her as _Berthe au grand pied_, but as otherwise beautiful and skilful in wielding the earliest implement of feminine industry. We may safely imagine her as tapping the mighty Charlemagne, leader of peerless knights, while yet a boy, with her convenient distaff; for her ascendency over him was such that he always regarded her with great reverence, even after his elevation to power!

And Bertha was not the only princess that laid her hand hold of the spindle. When the tomb of Jeanne de Bourbon, wife of Charles V. of France, was opened at St. Denis, among other things was found a distaff of gilded wood, but greatly decayed. And there is another in the Hôtel de Cluny, once used by some queen of France, we forget whom, on which is carven all the notable women of the Old Testament.

So too the daughters of Edward the Elder of England, though carefully educated, were so celebrated for their achievements in spinning and weaving that the term spinster is said to be derived from them.

And S. Walburga, the daughter of S. Richard, King of the Saxons, used to spin and weave among the royal and saintly maidens of Wimburn Minster. It was a common custom in those days. The distaff and the spindle were considered “the arms of every virtuous woman.”

The ancients held the use of them as such an accomplishment that Minerva is said to have come down to earth to teach the Greek women how to spin. Venus herself did not disdain to take upon herself the semblance of a spinner of fair wool when she appeared to Helen.

And spinning was as universal an acquirement among the Jewish as the Grecian women. They used to spin by moonlight on the housetops and, true to the instinct of their sex, kept so faithful an eye on their neighbors in the meanwhile that the ancient spinsters’ tongues were potent in the world of gossip. There is a tradition that S. Ann spun the virginal robes of her immaculate child in the pure beams of the chaste Dian.

Of the valiant woman in the Book of Proverbs it is said: “Her fingers have taken hold of the spindle.” And in Exodus we read that “the skilful women gave such things as they spun, violet, purple, and scarlet, and fine linen and goats’ hair, all of their own accord,” for the tabernacle.

We are told that the Jewish maidens who devoted themselves to the service of the temple were employed, among other things, in spinning the fine linen on their spindles of cedar, or ithel, a species of the oriental acacia, black as ebony and probably the same as the setim, or shittim wood, of the Holy Scriptures. According to tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who passed her early days in the temple, participated and excelled in all the pursuits then carried on. The _Protevangelion_ of S. James the Less relates that, when a new veil was to be made for the temple of our Lord, the priests confided the work to seven virgins of the tribe of David. They cast lots to see “who should spin the gold thread, who the blue, who the scarlet, and who the true scarlet.” It fell to Mary’s lot to spin the purple. Leaving her work, one day, to draw water in her jar, the angel drew near with his _Ave Maria_.

A distaff lies at Mary’s feet in Raphael’s “Annunciation,” and in many other celebrated paintings she is represented with one. In a “Riposa” by Albert Dürer she is depicted spinning from her distaff beside the Divine Babe who is sleeping in its cradle:

“Inter fila cantans orat
Blanda, veni somnuli.”

S. Bonaventura tells us that several of the early sacred writers speak of our Blessed Lady’s industry in spinning and sewing for the support of her Son and S. Joseph in the land of Egypt. So reduced to poverty were they that, according to him, she went from house to house to obtain work, probably flax to spin as she sat watching the Holy Infant in the grove of sycamores of traditional renown. Her unrivalled skill in spinning the fine flax of Pelusium became a matter of tradition, and the name of _Virgin’s Thread_ has been given to that network of dazzling whiteness and almost vaporous texture that floats over the deep valleys in the damp mornings of autumn, says the Abbé Orsini.

It is said the Church at Jerusalem preserved some of Mary’s spindles among its treasures, which were afterwards sent to the Empress Pulcheria, who placed them in one of the churches of Constantinople.

Other nations, too, had their famous spinsters. Dante’s ancestor in Paradise, looking back to earth, tells him of a Florentine dame of an opulent family who,

“With her maidens drawing off
The tresses from the distaff, lectured them
Old tales of Troy, and Fiesole, and Rome.”

And a Spanish writer of past times says, speaking of the model woman: “Behold this wife who purchases flax that she may spin with her maids. See her thus seated in the midst of her women.” Thus did Andromache spin among her attendants.

So have we seen old nuns spinning in the cloisters of the remote provinces of France: the white wool on their distaffs diminishing slowly and calmly as their own even lives. They looked as if spinning out their own serene destinies. Such a happy destiny is not reserved for all whose thread is drawn out by Lachesis.

“Twist ye, twine ye! even so
Mingle shades of joy and woe,
Hope and fear, and peace and strife,
In the thread of human life.”

At Rome there are two white lambs blessed on S. Agnes’ day (“S. Agnes and her lambs unshorn,” says Keats) in her church on the Nomentan road, and then they are placed in a convent till they are shorn, when their wool is spun by the sacred hands of the nuns. Of this the pallium is made—the distinctive mark of a metropolitan.

I have called the distaff the earliest implement of feminine industry. Such is the old tradition. There is a pathetic miniature of the twelfth century depicting an angel giving Adam a spade and Eve a distaff previous to their expulsion from Paradise: and on the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus of the fourth century, Adam is represented with a sheaf of grain, for he was to till the earth, and Eve with a lamb whose fleece she was to spin. And we have our old English rhyme:

“When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?”

And so faithfully was the tradition handed down that the distaff has always been regarded as a symbol of womanhood, which woman scorned to see even in the hands of a Hercules.

In these days, when even our rustic belles are overloaded with accomplishments, the piano takes the place of “Hygeia’s harp” on which the fair maidens of the olden time loved to discourse fair music, like the gentle Evangeline of Acadie, seated at her father’s side,

“Spinning flax for the loom that stood in the corner behind her,”

who, I fear, would be regarded in these days of improvement, at least in our country, with nearly as much horror as those other indefatigable spinners are by the good housewife:

“Weaving spiders, come not here;
Hence, you long‐legged spinners, hence!”

What charming pictures some of us retain in our memories of our gray‐ haired grandmothers of New England country life—delicately nurtured, too—sitting down in the afternoon by the huge fire‐place to spin flax on a little carved wheel! How many of us carefully preserve such a wheel in memory of those by‐gone days, when we loved to linger and watch the mysterious process, and look at the face that always was so kindly, and listen to the whirr whose music is now hushed for ever!

But though spinning by hand will soon become one of the lost arts, there is one who will spin on till time shall be no more—one from whose distaff is drawn out the web of our lives—the star‐crowned Clotho:

“Spin, spin, Clotho, spin!
Lachesis, twist! and, Atropos, sever!
Life is short and beset by sin,
’Tis only God endures for ever!”

A Martyr’s Journey.

From The French.

In the Beaujolais, the country _par excellence_ of beautiful women and beautiful vines, a little village lies hidden among luxuriant arbors. Each house is clothed in green leaves, and the wine, though rare, is not so wonderful as the immense tuns that hold it. Yet Coigny, with its nectar, its beautiful sky, its coquettish habitations its robust sons and attractive daughters, had not a habitable church. Still it dreamed of one, and four worthy priests worked hard and hopefully for the realization of the dream. One of them climbed well his ladder of orders, and has since become Bishop of Coutances; and if, as it is said, the zeal, piety, and legitimate influence of four ecclesiastics will finish the Cathedral of Cologne, notwithstanding the devil’s theft of the plan, what might not be hoped for Coigny?

So nothing more need be told than that, from amidst the lovely, smiling verdure of the little town, there sprang an exquisite white marble church, a temptation to pray in as well as to see, and the admiration of the entire province.

Madame la Marquise de —— gave all her inimitable guipures to ornament the high altar, and Monsieur le Comte de ——, a great amateur in pictures, placed a true Mignard—a Madonna with a lovely smile—upon the walls, even before they dried.

So each and all offered homage in the new house of God.

Still the beautiful little church lacked a patron, a saint under whose invocation it might be placed, and the blessed one must be represented by his own venerable ashes, a relic of the past, a protection for the future.

The village of Coigny, therefore, spared neither pains nor expense to be satisfied in this regard, and the Holy Father was applied to to select the patron. The dear old man replied favorably to the little town he could scarcely find on the map, and which was more noted for bearing the cross than ringing the bell; and a curious and grave ceremony took place.

They opened the Roman Catacombs, and they descended into the vaults of the cemetery of S. Cyriac, and there they chose the mortal remains of a Christian martyr buried for many centuries.

The stone that closed the cell bore a palm branch and the inscription,

Hilary At Rest,

and indicated he had died for the faith in the early ages of Christianity. His bones and the size of his head denoted only the adolescent, scarcely more than a child; while the whole expressed the courage of the man united to the grace of the angel.

The account from which this is taken adds, this young soldier of Christ was found sleeping peacefully at his post, extended on his granite bier, with his forehead cleft asunder, his neck cut open, of which the little bottle by his side held the precious blood. The figure of the young martyr had been covered with virgin wax, carefully enclosing the sacred bones, and, attired in silk and embroidery, he is holding the palm branch in his hand. The wounded head inclines as if bending to his murderers, his throat lies open in its deep sword‐wound, his hands and feet have bled, and the purple tide gushes from his wounds and trickles over his limbs; but his lips are shut with love, and his eyes are fixed, regarding with S. Stephen the heavens opening to receive him.

So this child of eighteen hundred years ago, this soldier of the faith, taken from the Roman Catacombs, was sent by the Pope to Coigny.

Can we not imagine his reception? Did not the village ring out its festal bells, and scatter flowers on his path, and with thousands of candles in the nave, and incense mounting far above the high altar, did not the little church welcome this contemporary of Nero, who had travelled surrounded by glorious palms in his own carriage over the line from Italy?

He has come, and twenty priests bear him on their shoulders, and his final resting‐place is under the high altar.

Coigny, the coquette, crowned by its green vine branches, bacchante‐like, the pious Coigny, has its martyr in the vaults of its own dear church, no more nor less than if it were a basilica.

True, he was an almost forgotten saint, and anonymously canonized, but the Scriptures told us long ago, “God knows how to recompense his own.”

Odd Stories: III. Peter The Powerful.