Page:Vagabond life in Mexico.djvu/145

Rh land of gold and silver, where the ambition of all the women is summed up in the couplet,

In my present position a rich marriage was the only resource left me, and I resolved to go to the New World and seek my fortune. I communicated my hopes to my mother. The payment of a debt gave me the means of procuring a passage in a ship from Bilboa; and full of hopes of being able to bring back a fortune to my mother, which was my only ambition, I set sail. I arrived at Vera Cruz a year ago, and visited the churches assiduously, the only place where the fair inhabitants delight to show themselves, but not one deigned to give me the slightest countenance. At night in the deserted streets I watched long, but to no purpose, for none appeared. I knew well that if I did not announce my presence under a window, I ran a risk of spending my nights as fruitlessly as my days. I had then recourse to music, and purchased a mandolin. Unluckily, though a passable musician, I was not poet enough to compose a good serenading song, and was forced to tack on to an old Romancero a piece of a wretched ballad that I remembered—the miserable bit of doggerel which had incited me to quit the old manor-house. I was engaged in singing that when you interrupted me."

The Spaniard here began to smoke with the air of a man who is resolved to do his duty conscientiously.

"And you are not much older than a boy," said I, much surprised at the abrupt conclusion of Don Jaime's story.