She was not a lady. She was in
service. She was tired of living because she was in love. They found her
three weeks afterwards; but, Santisima Maria! she was good for nothing
then."
Our little maid was too young to have sympathy for kings or servant
girls who die for love. She was a pretty picture as she sat there, her
blue eyes and Madonna face turned to the rosy west, singing in her sweet
child's voice her fierce little song of sedition and war:--
"Arriba los valientes!
Abajo tirania!
Pronto llegara el dia
De la Restauracion.
Carlistas a caballo!
Soldados en Campana!
Viva el Rey de Espana,
Don Carlos de Borbon!"
I cannot enumerate the churches of Toledo,--you find them in every
street and by-way. In the palmy days of the absolute theocracy this
narrow space contained more than a hundred churches and chapels. The
province was gnawed by the cancer of sixteen monasteries of monks and
twice as many convents of nuns, all crowded within these city walls.
Fully one half the ground of the city was covered by religious buildings
and mortmain property. In that age, when money meant ten times what it
signifies now, the rent-roll of the Church in Toledo was forty millions
of reals. There are even yet portions of the town where you find nothing
but churches and convents. The grass grows green in the silent streets.
You hear nothing but the chime of bells and the faint echoes of masses.
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