the reja, when, his thoughts being quite engrossed by this expectation, and his attention abstracted from every thing around him, he suddenly found himself attacked from behind by two men who were wrapt up in their cloaks and masked so that he could not recognize them, nor indeed had he time to think about it, for before he could even draw his sword they had stretched him dead upon the ground; he could only cry out Josefa’s name, and expire.
Doña Josefa was thrilled with dread at the tone in which her name was uttered; it seemed to portend something dreadful, such as she had never known before. She flew to the window, and by what remained of the gloaming light, she saw her lover’s body stretched lifeless on the ground, while the assassins had escaped without leaving a trace behind.
The terrible sight seemed to change Doña Josefa’s nature: all her woman’s weakness was quenched within her, and every thought bound up in the one determination of avenging the precious life which had been so cruelly sacrificed for love of her. She tore off her woman’s gear with the indignation of an enraged lioness, and arrayed herself in a full cavalier’s suit, with a montera11 to cover her head and an ample cloak to hide her from scrutiny. Then she took a belt well furnished with arms, and a sword and blunderbuss to boot; and then a purse with two hundred doubloons; thus accoutred she wandered forth in quest of Don Pedro de Valenzuela’s assassins, making her way in all haste out of Valencia, for she knew the assassins would not long have remained there.
Hiding herself in the mountains by day, and taking the most unfrequented paths by night, she wandered on till she came to Murcia, and there she resolved to take up her abode for some little time to rest, and also to learn what she might chance to hear.
Here, in her cavalier’s dress, she walked about on the promenades, joined knots of speakers in the public plazas, and at night sat down at the card-tables and other places of resort, every where keeping her ears open to drink in any word any one might let fall about her lover’s assassination. One night, as she was sitting at a table carelessly shuffling a pack of cards, she heard two gentlemen talking very earnestly, and some words they dropped made her strain all her attention to catch the thread of their discourse.
“Yes, they are gone on; I am sure of it; and some hours ago,” asseverated the first speaker, as if he had been contradicted before.
“To be sure,” rejoined the other, in a tone of yielding conviction; “it was not likely they should remain in the country. No doubt it is as you say.”
“Excuse me,” said Doña Josefa, approaching the speakers with a courtly bow, for she could restrain her curiosity no longer, “but I think you were speaking of some gentlemen of Seville… I am of Seville, and – ”
“Of Valencia,” politely rejoined the gentleman, fairly caught in the trap. Had Josefa said she was of Valencia, his mouth would have been sealed for fear of betraying secrets.
“Oh, indeed, of Valencia!” she continued, assuming a tone of disappointment; and then, after a moment’s pause, she added, as if indifferent, “I think you spoke as if concerned for some friends in trouble?”
“Oh, not friends,” answered the person addressed, with a slight shudder; “we had but the most distant acquaintance with them; but they called on us yesterday to ask us to help them out of a difficulty.”
“Ah! that is very often the way of the world,” replied Doña Josefa, for she felt she must keep the conversation going till she could get all the information she wanted, though scarcely seeing how to bring it to the right point without exciting suspicions. “I’ll warrant now it was a regular piece of Valencian roguery12; they came with some pitiful pretence, begging, I’ll be bound; and I dare say at this moment are laughing at the ease with which their doleful story loosed your purse-strings; ha, ha, ha!”
The silvery laugh and biting tone of the young cavalier stung the Murcians to the quick; it seemed a point of honour to justify themselves from the censure of having been cajoled. The friend who had all this time remained silent, not quite liking the freedom, but now completely reassured by the noble bearing, fair smooth brow, and perhaps also by the sad but winning glance of the young stranger, here joined in.
“You have a fine knowledge of the world, young friend, and such wise words do not often come from lips on which the hair is not yet grown. Nevertheless there was no deception on this occasion: I never saw men more blasted with fear and shame.”
“Ah!” pursued Josefa as carelessly as she could, for she saw she was now on the right track, “it is easy for a Valencian to assume a look of shame.”
“But, man, these were not men used to shame; these were true men and gentlemen of blood – blood as blue as any blood in Spain.”
“Pshaw! they told you so!” rejoined Josefa with an incredulous shrug, which she knew must bring out the names.
“Why it was no less than Don Leonardo and Don Gaspar Contreras!” broke in the other speaker.
“Don Leonardo and Don Gaspar Contreras!” ejaculated Josefa, this time hardly master of her contending emotions; yet knowing the importance of playing her part to the end, she added in a tone of thundering indignation, —
“And you can stand there and tell me that Don Leonardo and Don Gaspar Contreras came before you bowed with a look of shame, – to beg alms?”
“Even so, fair sir,” rejoined the Murcians; “and if you still have doubts you can go to Valencia, and seek for them; you will not find them there.”
“And pray, sir, why should I not find Don Leonardo and Don Gaspar Contreras in their noble palacio at Valencia?”
“Because they dare not show their faces there,” replied one.
“Because they are at this moment riding for their lives to the sea coast, and you would be more likely to find them at Cartagena,” exclaimed the other at the same moment.
Josefa had now learnt pretty well all she desired to know; nevertheless, to make quite sure of her facts, she sat down again, pushing chairs towards the Murcians, and continued in a more pacific and friendly tone, —
“You must excuse me, gentlemen, if the idea of coupling shame with the name of Contreras came upon me as so strange and unaccountable a conjunction, that I could not bring myself to accept it at first; but I am fain to take it on your honourable testimony. But pray tell me, what can have happened to bring this about? I have a cousin married to a Contreras, and whatever affects the honour of their house affects my own. It must have been some terrible necessity reduced them to this plight.”
“The old story – jealousy working in ill-regulated minds!” answered the elder speaker. “It seems Valencia possesses some monster of beauty, which has turned the hearts of all her cavaliers.”
“Doña Josefa Ramirez y Marmolejo!” interposed the younger Murcian apologetically, as though he thought it a reproach not to have the name of the beauty of the day on the tip of his lips.
“Well, the young lady, it seems, preferred to every one else of Valencia a certain Don Pedro de Valenzuela – ”
Josefa had managed to preserve her composure, in spite of her emotion at hearing her attractions canvassed by the two strangers, but at mention of Don Pedro’s name the blood fairly left her cheeks. To hide her embarrassment, she dropped her glove and stooped to pick it up, till she had summoned the colour back.
“The other gallants,” continued the speaker, not heeding
A warm hunting-cap, with flaps to cover the forehead and ears, capable therefore of serving, in some sort, as a disguise.
The Sevillians to the present day give a very bad character to the Valencians.
