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"No one," as Senor Valdes truly says, "can rise from the perusal of a naturalistic book . . . without a vivid desire to escape" from the wretched world depicted in it, "and a purpose, more or less vague, of helping to better the lot and morally elevate the abject beings who figure in it.
What the Señorita Valdés says, I say, too." "Then don't say it aloud, you little monkey, or I'll throw you over the house," Dick promised immediately. Don Manuel clicked his heels together and twirled his black mustache. "I offer you, sir, the remedy of a gentleman. You, sir, shall choose the weapons." The Anglo-Saxon laughed in his face. "Good. Let it be toasting-forks, at twenty paces."
When I have warned the American I'll round up your man-hunters and bring them back to you." His lady's face thanked him, though her words did not. "You may tell them I said they were to come back at once." At her cousin's urgent request Miss Valdés stayed to eat luncheon with him at Corbett's, which was a half-way station for the stage and maintained a public eating-house.
With forty officers he saluted Drake, complimenting him on 'valour and felicity so great that Mars and Neptune seemed to attend him, as also on his generosity towards the fallen foe, a quality often experienced by the Spaniards; whereupon, adds this eyewitness, 'Sir Francis Drake, requiting his Spanish compliments with honest English courtesies, placed him at his own table and lodged him in his own cabin. Drake's enemies at home accused him of having deserted his fleet to capture a treasure ship for there was a good deal of gold with Valdes.
It would too surely be noised round that the Americano was the claimant to the estate, in which event he was very likely to play the part of a sheath for restless stilettos. This did not trouble him as much as it would have done some men. The real sting of the episode lay in Valencia Valdés' attitude toward him. He had been kicked out for his unworthiness.
Gordon has read of Don Alvaro de Valdés y Castillo, lord of demesnes without number, conqueror of the Moors and of the fierce island English who then infested Spain in swarms. His retinue was as that of a king. At his many manors fed daily thirty thousand men at arms. In all Europe no knight so brave, so chivalrous, so skillful with lance and sword. To the nobles his word was law.
He steadfastly refused even to read the Russian masters, to his immense loss, as I tried to persuade him, and even among the modern Spaniards, for whom he might have had a sort of personal kindness from his love of Cervantes, he chose one for his praise the least worthy, of it, and bore me down with his heavier metal in argument when I opposed to Alarcon's factitiousness the delightful genuineness of Valdes.
Some days later, none knew by what means, De Marsay had attained his end; he had a seal and wax, exactly resembling the seal and wax affixed to the letters sent to Mademoiselle Valdes from London; paper similar to that which her correspondent used; moreover, all the implements and stamps necessary to affix the French and English postmarks.
There is probably no chair of literature in this country from which the principles now shaping the literary expression of every civilized people are not denounced and confounded with certain objectionable French novels, or which teaches young men anything of the universal impulse which has given us the work, not only of Zola, but of Tourguenief and Tolstoy in Russia, of Bjornson and Ibsen in Norway, of Valdes and Galdos in Spain, of Verga in Italy.
I have brought you a visitor." His eyes opened slowly, and there was a fleeting smile in them, but he did not speak. "Colonel!" said Valdés, stepping to the side of the bench. The sound of that voice brought the poor fellow for a short time from the Valley of the Shadow.
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