with the utmost gravity, and the wizened apes played all kinds of
amusing tricks with two gipsy boys who seemed to be their masters,
and fought with tiny swords, and fired off guns, and went through a
regular soldier's drill just like the King's own bodyguard. In
fact the gipsies were a great success.

But the funniest part of the whole morning's entertainment, was
undoubtedly the dancing of the little Dwarf. When he stumbled into
the arena, waddling on his crooked legs and wagging his huge
misshapen head from side to side, the children went off into a loud
shout of delight, and the Infanta herself laughed so much that the
Camerera was obliged to remind her that although there were many
precedents in Spain for a King's daughter weeping before her
equals, there were none for a Princess of the blood royal making so
merry before those who were her inferiors in birth. The Dwarf,
however, was really quite irresistible, and even at the Spanish
Court, always noted for its cultivated passion for the horrible, so
fantastic a little monster had never been seen. It was his first
appearance, too. He had been discovered only the day before,
running wild through the forest, by two of the nobles who happened
to have been hunting in a remote part of the great cork-wood that
surrounded the town, and had been carried off by them to the Palace
as a surprise for the Infanta; his father, who was a poor charcoal-
burner, being but too well pleased to get rid of so ugly and
useless a child. Perhaps the most amusing thing about him was his
complete unconsciousness of his own grotesque appearance. Indeed
he seemed quite happy and full of the highest spirits. When the
children laughed, he laughed as freely and as joyously as any of
them, and at the close of each dance he made them each the funniest
of bows, smiling and nodding at them just as if he was really one