Juana | Page 6

distributed, permitted the examination of
goods. Above this were the apartments of the merchant and his wife.
Rooms for an apprentice and a servant-woman were in a garret under
the roof, which projected over the street and was supported by
buttresses, giving a somewhat fantastic appearance to the exterior of the
building. These chambers were now taken by the merchant and his wife
who gave up their own rooms to the officer who was billeted upon
them,--probably because they wished to avoid all quarrelling.
Montefiore gave himself out as a former Spanish subject, persecuted by

Napoleon, whom he was serving against his will; and these semi-lies
had the success he expected. He was invited to share the meals of the
family, and was treated with the respect due to his name, his birth, and
his title. He had his reasons for capturing the good-will of the merchant
and his wife; he scented his madonna as the ogre scented the youthful
flesh of Tom Thumb and his brothers. But in spite of the confidence he
managed to inspire in the worthy pair the latter maintained the most
profound silence as to the said madonna; and not only did the captain
see no trace of the young girl during the first day he spent under the
roof of the honest Spaniard, but he heard no sound and came upon no
indication which revealed her presence in that ancient building.
Supposing that she was the only daughter of the old couple, Montefiore
concluded they had consigned her to the garret, where, for the time
being, they made their home.
But no revelation came to betray the hiding-place of that precious
treasure. The marquis glued his face to the lozenge-shaped leaded
panes which looked upon the black-walled enclosure of the inner
courtyard; but in vain; he saw no gleam of light except from the
windows of the old couple, whom he could see and hear as they went
and came and talked and coughed. Of the young girl, not a shadow!
Montefiore was far too wary to risk the future of his passion by
exploring the house nocturnally, or by tapping softly on the doors.
Discovery by that hot patriot, the mercer, suspicious as a Spaniard must
be, meant ruin infallibly. The captain therefore resolved to wait
patiently, resting his faith on time and the imperfection of men, which
always results--even with scoundrels, and how much more with honest
men!--in the neglect of precautions.
The next day he discovered a hammock in the kitchen, showing plainly
where the servant-woman slept. As for the apprentice, his bed was
evidently made on the shop counter. During supper on the second day
Montefiore succeeded, by cursing Napoleon, in smoothing the anxious
forehead of the merchant, a grave, black-visaged Spaniard, much like
the faces formerly carved on the handles of Moorish lutes; even the
wife let a gay smile of hatred appear in the folds of her elderly face.

The lamp and the reflections of the brazier illumined fantastically the
shadows of the noble room. The mistress of the house offered a
"cigarrito" to their semi-compatriot. At this moment the rustle of a
dress and the fall of a chair behind the tapestry were plainly heard.
"Ah!" cried the wife, turning pale, "may the saints assist us! God grant
no harm has happened!"
"You have some one in the next room, have you not?" said Montefiore,
giving no sign of emotion.
The draper dropped a word of imprecation against the girls. Evidently
alarmed, the wife opened a secret door, and led in, half fainting, the
Italian's madonna, to whom he was careful to pay no attention; only, to
avoid a too-studied indifference, he glanced at the girl before he turned
to his host and said in his own language:--
"Is that your daughter, signore?"
Perez de Lagounia (such was the merchant's name) had large
commercial relations with Genoa, Florence, and Livorno; he knew
Italian, and replied in the same language:--
"No; if she were my daughter I should take less precautions. The child
is confided to our care, and I would rather die than see any evil happen
to her. But how is it possible to put sense into a girl of eighteen?"
"She is very handsome," said Montefiore, coldly, not looking at her
face again.
"Her mother's beauty is celebrated," replied the merchant, briefly.
They continued to smoke, watching each other. Though Montefiore
compelled himself not to give the slightest look which might contradict
his apparent coldness, he could not refrain, at a moment when Perez
turned his head to expectorate, from casting a rapid glance at the young
girl, whose sparkling eyes met his. Then, with that science of vision
which gives to a libertine, as it does to a sculptor, the fatal power of

disrobing, if we may