"And well there may be," I broke in, "for it was here that Rafaela Sal came as a bride, and that Rezánov met Luis Argüello's beautiful sister, Concepcion, and a love story began which may well take place with that of Miles Standish and Priscilla."
"Rezánov," he repeated, searching his memory. "I recall that there was a romance connected with his visit to San Francisco but the details have escaped me. Please sit down on this bench and tell me the story just as if I had never heard it before."
"More than a century ago there dwelt in this old adobe house a beautiful maiden," I began. "Her father was Comandante of the Presidio, 'el Santo,' the people termed him, because of his goodness. Concepcion, or Concha, as she was affectionately called by her parents, was only fifteen years old when our story begins--a tall, slender girl with masses of fine black hair and the fair Castilian skin, inherited from her mother. So lovely was she that many a caballero had already sung at her grating, but she would listen to none of them. Her lover would come from over the sea, she declared, someone who could tell her about the wide outside world.
"'Then you will die unmarried,' said her mother, kissing the soft cheek, 'for travelers seldom come as far as San Francisco.'
"'A ship! a ship!' sounded a cry from the plaza. A vessel had been sighted off Cantil Blanco, the first foreign ship seen since Vancouver's visit fourteen years before.
"'It is the Russian expedition which Spain has ordered us to treat courteously,' exclaimed Don Luis, bursting into the house, his face aglow with excitement. 'Since father is in Monterey and I am acting Comandante, I must receive these strangers,' he continued as he threw his serape over his shoulders, his eyes flashing with his first taste of command.
"'Be careful,' cautioned his mother, 'we have had no word from Europe for nine months and the last packet boat from Mexico brought a rumor of war with Russia.'
"But the foreign vessel had come only with friendly intentions. The Russian Chamberlain Rezánov, in charge of the Czar's northwestern possessions, had found a starving colony at Sitka and had brought a cargo of goods to the more productive southland with the hope of exchanging it for foodstuffs. To be sure, he knew the Spanish law strictly forbidding trade with foreign vessels, but it seemed the only means of saving his famishing people and he trusted much to his skill in diplomacy.