delay it,--his wife promised to be again a mother. Blanche was born.
How could he take the infant from the mother's breast, or abandon the
daughter to the fatal influences from which only, by so violent an
effort, he could free the son?

No wonder, poor Roland, that those deep furrows contracted thy bold
front, and thy hair grew gray before its time!

Fortunately, perhaps, for all parties, Roland's wife died while Blanche
was still an infant. She was taken ill of a fever; she died delirious,
clasping her boy to her breast, and praying the saints to protect him
from his cruel father. How often that death-bed haunted the son, and
justified his belief that there was no parent's love in the heart which
was now his sole shelter from the world and the "pelting of its pitiless
rain!" Again I say "poor Roland;" for I know that in that harsh,
unloving disrupture of such solemn ties thy large, generous heart forgot
its wrongs,--again didst thou see tender eyes bending over the wounded
stranger, again hear low murmurs breathe the warm weakness which the
women of the South deem it no shame to own. And now did it all end in
those ravings of hate, and in that glazing gaze of terror?

(1) A Spaniard very rarely indeed marries a Gitana, or female gypsy.
But occasionally (observes Mr. Borrow) a wealthy Gitano marries a
Spanish female.




CHAPTER IV.