THE SPANISH STUDENT.

ACT I.

SCENE I. The COUNT OF LARA's chambers. Night. The COUNT in his dressing-gown, smoking and conversing with DON CARLOS.

LARA.

You were not at the play to-night, Don Carlos;

How happened it?

DON CARLOS.

I had engagements elsewhere.

Pray who was there?

LARA.

Why, all the town and court.

The house was crowded; and the busy fans

B

Among the gayly dressed and perfumed ladies Fluttered like butterflies among the flowers. There was the Countess of Medina Celi; The Goblin Lady with her Phantom Lover, Her Lindo Don Diego; Doña Sol,

And Doña Serafina, and her cousins.

DON CARLOS.

What was the play?

LARA.

It was a dull affair ;

One of those comedies in which you see,

As Lope says, the history of the world

Brought down from Genesis to the Day of Judg

ment.

There were three duels fought in the first act,
Three gentlemen receiving deadly wounds,
Laying their hands upon their hearts, and saying,
"O, I am dead!" a lover in a closet,
An old hidalgo, and a gay Don Juan,
A Doña Inez with a black mantilla,

Followed at twilight by an unknown lover,

Who looks intently where he knows she is not!

DON CARLOS.

Of course, the Preciosa danced to-night?

LARA.

And never better. Every footstep fell
As lightly as a sunbeam on the water.
I think the girl extremely beautiful.

DON CARLOS.

Almost beyond the privilege of woman!

I saw her in the Prado yesterday.

Her step was royal,-queen-like, and her face

As beauteous as a saint's in Paradise.

ᏞᎪᎡᎪ.

May not a saint fall from her Paradise,

And be no more a saint?

DON CARLOS.

Why do you ask?

LARA.

Because I have heard it said this angel fell,

And, though she is a virgin outwardly,
Within she is a sinner; like those panels
Of doors and altar-pieces the old monks
Painted in convents, with the Virgin Mary
On the outside, and on the inside Venus!

DON CARLOS.

You do her wrong; indeed, you do her wrong! She is as virtuous as she is fair.

LARA.

How credulous you are! Why look you, friend,
There's not a virtuous woman in Madrid,
In this whole city! And would you persuade me
That a mere dancing-girl, who shows herself,
Nightly, half-naked, on the stage, for money,
And with voluptuous motions fires the blood
Of inconsiderate youth, is to be held
A model for her virtue ?

DON CARLOS.

She is a Gipsy girl.

You forget