As was natural, after hearing it, I waited impatiently for the ceremony to commence, eager to be present at a miracle.
Nothing could be less miraculous, however, than the organ of Santa Inés, and nothing more vulgar than the insipid motets with which that night the organist regaled us.
On going out from the mass, I could not resist asking the lay-sister mischievously:
“How does it happen that the organ of Master Pérez is so unmusical at present?”
“Why!” replied the old woman. “Because it isn’t his.”
“It fell to pieces from sheer old age, a number of years ago.”
“It has not appeared again since the new organ was set up in place of his own.”
If anyone of my readers, after perusing this history, should be moved to ask the same question, now he knows why the notable miracle has not continued into our own time.
“Do you see that man with the scarlet cloak and the white plume in his hat,--the one who seems to wear on his waistcoat all the gold of the galleons of the Indies,--that man, I mean, just stepping down from his litter to give his hand to the lady there, who, now that she is out of hers, is coming our way, preceded by four pages with torches? Well, that is the Marquis of Moscoso, suitor to the widowed Countess of Villapineda. They say that before setting his eyes upon this lady, he had asked in marriage the daughter of a man of large fortune, but the girl’s father, of whom the rumor goes that he is a bit of a miser,--but hush! Speaking of the devil--do you see that man coming on foot under the arch of San Felipe, all muffled up in a dark cloak and attended by a single servant carrying a lantern? Now he is in front of the outer shrine.
“Do you notice, as his cloak falls back while he salutes the image, the embroidered cross that sparkles on his breast?
“If it were not for this noble decoration, one would take him for a shop-keeper from Culebras street. Well, that is the father in question. See how the people make way for him and lift their hats.
“Everybody in Seville knows him on account of his immense fortune. That one man has more golden ducats in his chests than our lord King Philip maintains soldiers, and with his merchantmen he could form a squadron equal to that of the Grand Turk----