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What strange, relentless power is it that perpetually awards an angel to a madman; to a man of heart, of true poetic passion, a base woman; to the petty, grandeur; to this demented brain, a beautiful, sublime being; to Juana, Captain Diard, whose history at Bordeaux I have told you; to Madame de Beauseant, an Ajuda; to Madame d'Aiglemont, her husband; to the Marquis d'Espard, his wife!
She had but to open her jaws, as it were, and she might bring a second earthquake on the city batter it into kingdom-come with the Ajuda palace and the Necessidades, the churches, and the lean, dry, empty streets, and Don John, tremendous on horseback, in the midst of Black Horse Square. Wherever we looked we could see that enormous "Caledonia," with her flashing three lines of guns.
Of all the great nobles of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who allowed themselves to be won over by Napoleon, this Duke and Duchess she was an Ajuda of the senior branch, and connected with the Braganzas were the only family who afterwards never disowned him and his liberality.
Although the palace has not attained anything like its full growth, yet what exists is quite big enough for the monarch of such a little country; and Versailles or Windsor has not apartments more nobly proportioned. The Queen resides in the Ajuda, a building of much less pretensions, of which the yellow walls and beautiful gardens are seen between Belem and the city.
Indeed it is impossible to admire any of the buildings erected in Portugal since the earthquake; the palaces of the Necessidades and the Ajuda are but great masses of pink-washed plaster pierced with endless windows, and without any beauty of detail or of design. Nor does the church of the Coração de Jesus, usually called the Estrella, call for any admiration.
"You cannot doubt that I should obey you with pleasure," he answered, and there was a sarcastic tinge in his politeness which Eugene did not detect, "but I ought to go to meet some one at the Varietes." "His mistress," said she to herself. "Then, is not Ajuda coming for you this evening?" inquired the Vicomte. "No," she answered, petulantly.
Advancing we remarked the glorious Belem monastery, defiled by its ignoble modern ruin to the west; the new hippodrome crowning the grassy slope; the Bed House of Belem, now being brightened up for Royal residence during the Exhibition of 1882; the Memoria and the Ajuda Palace, more unfinished, if possible, than ever.
And when Tim fished a damp cigarette from his shirt, nonchalantly scraped a match on his host's table, blew a cloud of smoke, and sprawled back with one leg dangling over a chair arm, formality went a-glimmering. "A quem madruga Deus ajuda," laughed the coronel. "Or, as you North Americans put it, 'God helps those who help themselves. Let us not be ceremonious, gentlemen.
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