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It is a darkened chamber in the College of Alcala, in the year 1562, where lies, probably in a huge four-post bed, shrouded in stifling hangings, the heir-apparent of the greatest empire in the then world, Don Carlos, only son of Philip II. and heir-apparent of Spain, the Netherlands, and all the Indies.

The world will never see again so brilliant a throng of ingenuous youth as gathered together in the great university towns in those years of vivid and impassioned greed for letters that followed the revival of learning. The romance of Oxford or Heidelberg or Harvard is tame compared with that electric life of a new-born world that wrought and flourished in Padua, Paris, and Alcala.

The time of his arrival at Barcelona was about Lent of the year 1524; and as he remained there upwards of two years, we do not find him at Alcala until the year 1526. At the latter place he spent his time in studying the works of Scotus, Albertus, Alcuin, and the Master of the Sentences.

She looks at a door on the left of the hall, and puts a finger to her lip. 'Hush! she says. 'We must be quiet. Daddy and grandpa are busy in there cornering wheat. And softly mother and child go out into the sunlit garden. In Alcala, as in most of New York's apartment houses, the schedule of prices is like a badly rolled cigarette thick in the middle and thin at both ends.

All faces are turned one way, all minds are filled with one purpose. From the Puerta del Sol down the wide Alcala a vast crowd winds, solid as a glacier and bright as a kaleidoscope. From the grandee in his blazoned carriage to the manola in her calico gown, there is no class unrepresented.

The king departed, therefore, from Cordova, and took post at Alcala la Real, for the purpose of being near to Moclin. The queen also proceeded to Vaena, accompanied by her children, Prince Juan and the princess Isabella, and her great counsellor in all matters, public and private, spiritual and temporal, the venerable grand cardinal of Spain.

In 1657 George de Paz y Silveira, who was related on his mother's side to the MacDonnells of Antrim, founded a college at Alcalá principally for students from the North of Ireland. According to the directions of the founder the election of the rector was vested in the hands of the student body, a regulation that led to grave disorders, and finally to the closing of the college.

Between Montera and Alcala Streets there was a cafe before whose illuminated windows women passed up and down dressed in bright clothes and wearing crape kerchiefs, singing, accosting benighted passers-by; several loafers, lurking behind the lanterns, watched them and chatted with them, giving them orders.... Then came a procession of street-women, touts and procurers.

Many rumors, as was stated above, became widespread in Alcala, and reached the ears even of the Inquisitors who were at Toledo, and who, as their host testified, styled Ignatius and his associates, Legati or Illuminati, and threatened him with capital punishment.

But above all, he was pleased with the natural eventlessness of the whole adventure, which was in perfect agreement with his taste; and just as his reveries began to lose shape in dreams, he was aware of an absurd pride in the fact that all this could have happened to him in our commonplace time and hemisphere. "Why," he thought, "if I were a student in Alcala, what better could I have asked?"