by scraping street music on a guitar as loud as he could. Otherwise he
was as calm as if he were entertaining two angels instead of two
devils incarnate.

I do not know, I repeat, how this scene would have ended, when there
crossed the threshold a parsonage who came to take a part in the
development of the drama. There entered, I say, a woman of twenty to
twenty-two years of age, diminutive in body, superlative in audacity
and grace. Neat and clean hose and shoes, short, black flounced
petticoat, a linked girdle, head-dress or mantilla of fringed taffeta
caught together at the nape of her neck, and a corner of it over her
shoulder, she passed before my eyes with swaying hips, arms akimbo,
and moving her head to and fro as she looked about her on all sides.

Upon seeing her the tavern-keeper dropped his instrument, and I was
overtaken by perturbation such as I had not experienced for thirty
years (I am, after all, only flesh and blood); but, without halting
for such lay-figures, she advanced to the field of battle.

There was a lively to-do here; Don Pulpete and Don Balbeja when they
saw Doña Gorja appear, first cause of the disturbance and future prize
for the victor, increased their feints, flourishes, curvets, onsets,
crouching, and bounds--all, however, without touching a hair. Our
Helen witnessed in silence for a long time this scene in history with
that feminine pleasure which the daughters of Eve enjoy at such
critical moments. But gradually her pretty brow clouded over, until,
drawing from her delicate ear, not a flower or earring, but the stump
of a cigar, she hurled it amidst the jousters. Not even Charles V's
cane in the last duel in Spain produced such favorable effects. Both
came forward immediately with formal respect, and each, by reason of