Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/453

 he entered a shipping-house as clerk, and, having excellent mercantile talents, was rapidly promoted.

"Meantime, through a sister, the only remaining child, except a half-witted brother, he heard at long intervals from home. His father remained strangely inexorable, fiercely forbade his return, and became violent at the slightest mention of his name by his sister, or some old and attached servant; he died without bequeathing his forgiveness, or, of course, a single shilling. But the young man thrived with his employers, whose business growing rapidly more and more prosperous, and becoming widely extended, they transferred him to a branch house at Malaga. Here he formed the acquaintance of the Don Francisco de Zea-Bermudez, whose rising fortunes made his own.

"Zea-Bermudez was at that time engaged in large commercial operations. Although, under the diligent and ambitious teaching of his famous relative, the profound, sagacious, patriotic, bold, and gloriously abused Jovellanos, he had become accomplished in politics, law, and diplomacy, he seemed to be devoting himself for the present to large speculations and the sudden acquisition of wealth, and to let the state of the nation, the Cortes, and its schemes, alone.

"Only a young, beautiful, and accomplished sister shared his splendid establishment in Malaga; and for her my father formed an engrossing attachment, reciprocated in the fullest, almost simultaneously with his friendship for her brother. Zea favored the suit of the high-spirited and clever young Englishman, whose intelligence, independence, and perseverance, to say nothing of his good looks and his engaging manners, had quite won his heart. By policy, too, no less than by pleasure, the match recommended itself to him;--my father would make a famous junior-partner. So they were married under the name of Pintal, bestowed upon his favorite English clerk by the adventurous first patron at Carthagena, who had found the boy provided with only a 'purser's name,' as sailors term it.

"I will not be so disrespectful to the memory of my distinguished uncle, nor so rude toward your intelligence, my friend, as to presume that you are not familiar with the main points of his history,--the great strides he took, almost from that time, in a most influential diplomatic career: the embassy to St. Petersburg, and the Romanzoff-Bermudez treaty of amity and alliance in 1812, by which Alexander acknowledged the legality of the ordinary and extraordinary Cortes of Cadiz; the embassy to the Porte in 1821; his recall in 1823, and extraordinary mission to the Court of St. James; his appointment to lead the Ministry in 1824; my father's high place in the Treasury; their joint efforts from this commanding position to counteract the violence of the Apostolical party, to meet the large requisitions of France, to cover the deficit of three hundred millions of reals, and to restore the public credit; the insults of the Absolutists, and their machinations to thwart his liberal and sagacious measures; his efforts to resign, opposed by the King; the suppression of a formidable Carlist conspiracy in 1825; the execution of Bessières, and the 'ham-stringing' of Absolutist leaders; his dismissal from the Ministry in October, 1825, Ferdinand yielding to the Apostolic storm; the embassy to Dresden; his appointment as Minister at London.

"And here my story begins, for I was his Secretary of Legation then; while my brother Miguel, younger than I, was _attaché_ at Paris, where he had succeeded me, on my promotion,--a promotion that procured for me congratulations for which I could with difficulty affect a decent show of gratitude, for I knew too well what it meant. It was not the enlightened, liberal Minister I had to deal with, but the hard, proud uncle, full of expediencies, and calculating schemes for family advancement, and the exaltation of a lately obscure name.

"In Paris I had been admitted first to the flattering friendship, and then to the