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This afternoon I went to San Sebastian to buy paper and salicylate of soda, which is less agreeable. A number of public guards were riding together in the car on the way over, along the frontier. They were discussing bull fighters, El Gallo and Belmonte, and also the disorders of the past few days.
Bearing this in mind, special significance attaches to a discovery recently made by Prof. d’Allosso. In the ancient necropolis of Belmonte, dating from the iron age, are two very rich tombs of women warriors with war chariots over their remains.
From himself we learn that he was taken from Belmonte to Madrid when he was five or six, that at the age of fourteen he was entered at Salamanca University, where one of his uncles Francisco de Leon was lecturer on Canon Law, and that shortly afterwards he resolved to enter a religious order.
It is not certain that he could have done so, had he been continuously in Salamanca at this time: as it happened, he was absent at Belmonte from the beginning of 1571 till the month of March, and on his return he fell ill.
Belmonte, the pretended owner of the girl, had obtained possession of her by an act of sale from John F. Miller, the planter in whose service Salome's father died. This Miller was a man of consideration and substance, owning large sugar estates, and bearing a high reputation for honour and honesty, and for indulgent treatment of his slaves.
This is almost the only scrap of evidence available, for no baptismal registers dating back to the third decade of the sixteenth century are preserved at Belmonte. Did the inscription on Luis de Leon's tomb mean that he had completed his sixty-fourth year, or did it mean that, at the time of his death, he had entered upon his sixty-fourth year?
He had long since dropped the name of Balsamo on account of the many ugly associations that clung to it; and during his travels had assumed at least half a score others, with titles annexed to them. He called himself sometimes the Chevalier de Fischio, the Marquis de Melissa, the Baron de Belmonte, de Pelligrini, d'Anna, de Fenix, de Harat, but most commonly the Count de Cagliostro.
That was naught but a limber steel blade, with a plain, serviceable handle, like the handle of a slaughter-house knife. Who ever saw a star when the noon sun was in sight? But you seldom see a king without satellites. In the suite of the youthful Emperor came a princely train; so brilliant with gems, that they seemed just emerged from the mines of the Rio Belmonte.
On the 14th of February, 1855, the hill of Belmonte, a little below the parish of San Stefano, in Tuscany, slid into the valley of the Tiber, which consequently flooded the village to the depth of fifty feet, and was finally drained off by a tunnel.
It was testified on the trial that he had said to Belmonte, a few weeks after the sale of Salome, "that she was white, and had as much right to her freedom as any one, and was only to be retained in slavery by care and kind treatment." The broker who negotiated the sale from Miller to Belmonte, in 1838, testified in Court that he then thought, and still thought, that the girl was white!
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