compliments. So she tossed her pretty head, and taking Don Pedro
by the hand, she walked slowly down the steps towards a long
pavilion of purple silk that had been erected at the end of the
garden, the other children following in strict order of precedence,
those who had the longest names going first.


A procession of noble boys, fantastically dressed as toreadors,
came out to meet her, and the young Count of Tierra-Nueva, a
wonderfully handsome lad of about fourteen years of age, uncovering
his head with all the grace of a born hidalgo and grandee of Spain,
led her solemnly in to a little gilt and ivory chair that was
placed on a raised dais above the arena. The children grouped
themselves all round, fluttering their big fans and whispering to
each other, and Don Pedro and the Grand Inquisitor stood laughing
at the entrance. Even the Duchess--the Camerera-Mayor as she was
called--a thin, hard-featured woman with a yellow ruff, did not
look quite so bad-tempered as usual, and something like a chill
smile flitted across her wrinkled face and twitched her thin
bloodless lips.

It certainly was a marvellous bull-fight, and much nicer, the
Infanta thought, than the real bull-fight that she had been brought
to see at Seville, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of
Parma to her father. Some of the boys pranced about on richly-
caparisoned hobby-horses brandishing long javelins with gay
streamers of bright ribands attached to them; others went on foot
waving their scarlet cloaks before the bull, and vaulting lightly
over the barrier when he charged them; and as for the bull himself,
he was just like a live bull, though he was only made of wicker-