Mare Nostrum



CHAPTER I


CAPTAIN ULYSSES FERRAGUT

His first gallantries were with an empress. He was ten years old, and
the empress six hundred.

His father, Don Esteban Ferragut--third quota of the College of
Notaries--had always had a great admiration for the things of the past.
He lived near the cathedral, and on Sundays and holy days, instead of
following the faithful to witness the pompous ceremonials presided over
by the cardinal-archbishop, used to betake himself with his wife and
son to hear mass in _San Juan del Hospital_,--a little church sparsely
attended the rest of the week.

The notary, who had read Walter Scott in his youth, used to gaze on the
old and turreted walls surrounding the church, and feel something of
the bard's thrills about his own, his native land. The Middle Ages was
the period in which he would have liked to have lived. And as he trod
the flagging of the _Hospitolarios_, good Don Esteban, little, chubby,
and near-sighted, used to feel within him the soul of a hero born too
late. The other churches, huge and rich, appeared to him with their