Teutonic charms of these fair-haired daughters of the north, (so
antipodal to all we are accustomed to see in our sunburned
provinces,) than by the mannered graces of her pleasure-worn Parisian
belles."--

"Certain it is," observed Gonzaga, (despite his recent pledge,) "that
there is no greater contrast than between our wild-eyed, glowing
Andalusians, and the slow-footed, blue-eyed daughters of these
northern mists, whose smiles are as moonshine to sunshine!"

"After excess of sunshine, people sometimes prefer the calmer and
milder radiance of the lesser light. And I promise you that, at this
moment, if there be pillows sleepless yonder in the camp for the sake
of the costly fragile toys called womankind, those jackasses of
lovelorn lads have cause to regret the sojourn of Queen Margaret in
Belgium, only as having brought forth from their castles in the
Ardennes or the froggeries of the Low Country, the indigenous
divinities that I would were at this moment at the bottom of their
muddy moats, or of the Sambre flowing under yonder window!"--

"It is one of these Brabançon belles, then, who"--

Gabriel Nignio de Zuniga half rose from his chair, as a signal for
breaking off the communication he was not allowed to pursue in his
own way.--Taking counsel of himself, however, he judged that the
shorter way was to tell his tale in a shorter manner, so as to set
further molestation at defiance.

"In one word," resumed he, with a vivacity of utterance foreign to
his Spanish habits of grandiloquence, "at that ball, there appeared