Paquita

“ Well, niña, Paquita is the merriest of girls! She has always some prank to play upon some one, and, indeed, she cares not if it is the Mother Superior herself, so she can have her joke. Her aunt, good Sister Mercedes, is always fretting for fear lest Paquita should be in disgrace, but it worries Paquita not at all. One night she did the funniest thing. There is one girl who is very mean to the little ones, always teasing them, and they dare say nothing, as she is the niece of the Mother Superior, and she believes nothing against her. ”

“ Paquita got up gently, her eyes full of tears, took a poniard from one of the two ebony pieces of furniture, and presented it to Henri with a gesture of submission which would have moved a tiger.
"Give me a feast such as men give when they love," she said, "and whilst I sleep, slay me, for I know not how to answer thee. Hearken! I am bound like some poor beast to a stake; I am amazed that I have been able to throw a bridge over the abyss which divides us. Intoxicate me, then kill me! Ah, no, no!" she cried, joining her hands, "do not kill me! I love life! Life is fair to me! ”

“ Paquita responded to that passion which is felt by all really great men for the infinite—that mysterious passion so dramatically expressed in Faust, so poetically translated in Manfred, and which urged Don Juan to search the heart of women, in his hope to find there that limitless thought in pursuit of which so many hunters after spectres have started, which wise men think to discover in science, and which mystics find in God alone. ”

“ However unwelcome the meeting might have been to Shelby—and his face showed plainly that it was so—there could be no doubt of Paquita’s eagerness to see him. As I looked at her I could only wonder at the strangeness of life. She whom men had pursued and had found elusive, even 261when they thought they had her captured, was now herself in the anomalous rôle of pursuer. And the man whom she pursued cared no more for her than she for those who pursued her. Nay more, he was openly, hopelessly in love with another woman, in every respect the antithesis of herself. ”

“ The servants could not evade the ever watchful but cold attention that seemed to pursue them. The children of the Presidio school smirched their copybooks under the awful supervision, and poor Paquita, the prize pupil, failed utterly in that marvelous upstroke when her patron stood beside her. Gradually distrust, suspicion, self-accusation, and timidity took the place of trust, confidence, and security throughout San Carlos. ”

“ For a moment Paquita said nothing. Then suddenly she burst forth with a little bitter laugh.
“It takes two to be strangers. We shall see!”
Without another word she turned, as though in a fit of pique and anger, and ran up the flight of steps from the bath-houses to the Casino, passing within five feet of us, without seeing us.
“We shall see,” she muttered under her breath; “we shall see!”
In surprise Shelby took a step or two after her, then paused.
“The deuce take her,” he swore under his breath, then strode on in the direction of the steps to the dock and the summer-house. ”

“ The whole poem was written up to this situation, which was worked out with such vigor and boldness as too entirely justified the Abbe Duret.
Paquita, on reaching the limits set to real love, did not, like Julie and Heloise, throw herself into the ideal; no, she rushed into the paths of vice, which is, no doubt, shockingly natural; but she did it without any touch of magnificence, for lack of means, as it would be difficult to find in Rouen men impassioned enough to place Paquita in a suitable setting of luxury and splendor. ”

“ In a moment he had poured out a thousand foolish words to her, with the rapidity of a torrent coursing between the rocks, and repeating the same sound in a thousand different forms.
“It is the same voice!” said Paquita, in a melancholy voice, which De Marsay could not overhear, “and the same ardor,” she added. “So be it—yes,” she said, with an abandonment of passion which no words can describe. “Yes; but not to-night. To-night Adolphe, I gave too little opium to La Concha. She might wake up, and I should be lost. At this moment the whole household believes me to be asleep in my room. ”

“ The room, the old woman, the cold hearth, all would have chilled love to death had not Paquita been there, upon an ottoman, in a loose voluptuous wrapper, free to scatter her gaze of gold and flame, free to show her arched foot, free of her luminous movements. This first interview was what every rendezvous must be between persons of passionate disposition, who have stepped over a wide distance quickly, who desire each other ardently, and who, nevertheless, do not know each other. ”

“ The firelight played upon the low beams and rafters, but left the bowed figure of Salvatierra in darkness. Sitting thus, he felt a small hand touch his arm, and looking down, saw the figure of Paquita, his little Indian pupil, at his knee. “Ah, littlest of all,” said the Commander, with something of his old tenderness, lingering over the endearing diminutives of his native speech—“sweet one, what doest thou here? Art thou not afraid of him whom everyone shuns and fears?” ”

“ Jacinto Quesada turned his head and plunged his austere glance into her deep yearning eyes.
"Paquita," he said, not coldly, but without any weakness of pity, "it is because I am strong and absolute that I cannot love you. When your eye caresses me with its look, your tongue with its subtle flattery, my masculinity rebels at the thought of being wooed by a woman; I am revolted, sickened! Fling your soul with the same impetuosity and passion to some Gypsy lad, and he may love you ”

“ We know mythology and the fable of Argus.”
Before entering the carriage, the golden-eyed girl exchanged certain glances with her lover, of which the meaning was unmistakable and which enchanted Henri, but one of them was surprised by the duenna; she said a few rapid words to Paquita, who threw herself into the coupe with an air of desperation. For some days Paquita did not appear in the Tuileries. ”

“ Such a breach of decorum was never seen before, and the nuns were shocked to a degree. Teresa kept shrieking, [69] 'A wild beast is in my bed! a wild beast is in my bed!' and after calming her down they went to investigate. What do you think they found? A feather duster! It was tucked under the sheets, and who could have put it there? No one knew, but every one felt that Paquita was the only one who could have thought of such mischief. But the sisters did not try to find out, for one of them had seen Teresa teasing the little girl, and knew why Paquita disliked her so much ”

“ Brought up at Havana, she was then taken back to Madrid, accompanied by a creole girl of the Antilles, Paquita Valdes, with whom she maintained passionate unnatural relations, that marriage did not interrupt and which were being continued in Paris in 1815, when the marquise, meeting a rival in her brother, Henri de Marsay, killed Paquita. After this murder, Madame de San Real retired to Spain to the convent of Los Dolores. ”

“ Nothing could be more dainty than the description of the parting between the Spanish girl and the Normandy Captain of Artillery, who, in the delirium of passion expressed with feeling worthy of Byron, exacted from Paquita a vow of absolute fidelity, in the Cathedral at Rouen in front of the alter of the Blessed Virgin, who
Though a Maid is a woman, and never forgives When lovers are false to their vows.
A large part of the poem was devoted to describing Paquita’s sufferings when alone in Rouen waiting till the campaign was over ”

“ He held out many inducements to Fairchild in the way of material for stories; but the young man persisted in his inability to accept the invitation.
One of the plots suggested was indeed extraordinary. The letter went on:
"The heroine of my yarn was a certain Paquita. Does that strain your credulity? Well, it's a fact which you may easily verify when you come up with Clay. In my veracious legend Paquita stabbed herself with a magnificent jewelled dagger, the same having been the gift of a false lover. Could it have been your 'Silver Blade,' I wonder? .... ”

“ Paquita would drop down from the woods on the hill above the cabin, the little belle and beauty of the camp. But she never spoke to the miners or any one, save to only answer them in the briefest way possible.
They hardly liked this ; and they hardly liked the Prince from the start, I think, anyhow. He was, as an expression of the time went, a little too " fine-haired. " He spoke too properly ; he never u got on any glo rious benders," with the western men, nor could he eat codfish, or talk about Boston, with the eastern. He took hold of no man s hand hastily. ”

“ By this cipher which I have here she was ordered to go to New York, in order to mislead me. The plan failed. Always in the most clever schemes of crime, they fail at some point. Unless I am very much mistaken, Paquita has seen through the designs. What she will do I do not profess to know. For, in addition to the mixed motives of her hopeless love for Shelby Maddox and jealousy of Miss Walcott, her disappearance this morning indicates 340that she is in mortal fear of an attack inspired by the plotter. ”

“ While Fernando storms over the retention of Carlos, Paquita sadly broods over her love for Christopher. As she soliloquizes at her window Christopher appears. He cannot remain away from the object of his love. A scene ensues between the two. In the meantime Carlos and Mercedes have secretly stolen from the ship and been married by the village priest. They appear while Paquita and Christopher are conversing. (Quartette.) Fernando hears the commotion. (Quintette.) Christopher is discovered and apprehended. The buccaneers appear to rescue their long-absent captain. ”

“ But there are enterprising newspapers also in the City of Mexico, and enterprising dealers in curios; so there you have the genesis of the story of the Doctor's paper-knife. So much for it.... Now then, question one: Did you ever hear of any other Paquita?"
Charlotte's answer was a decided negative. "If you are trying to establish such a person as ever having been a living reality, and as ever having had interests involved with the past of the Westbrook family, I believe it will lead to nothing ”

“ All who touched la belle France returned free; so Paqueta’s mistress, knowing full well that her little maid-in-waiting, whom she had spoilt, and whom everybody had spoilt, was too white for servitude, was too white for any thing except one long Easter-day, as the pagans kept it, put her among her baggage. I saw Paqueta on shipboard, and there, standing upon the deck which was to take her forever from the clime of which she was a most true child, the wind whistling through her hair, and her tongue garrulous of the joy which childhood ever finds in all things new. ”

“ Paqueta loved dress above all things, and had the taste to wear it—the French part of her composition—and when, on a gala day, she appeared tricked out with ribbons, her joy ran over, and sparkled in her eyes, and lighted up her face, and babbled from her tongue, and played in her feet, so airily, that she seemed to tread upon nothing. She loved admiration, too; and no punishment could be devised, for any of her faults, so effective as the forbidding her to appear before the company which visited her mistress’ house. She took to music from nature, for she was born amid the sound of bells ”

“ Who knows but that he may add to the territory under my sway by another pachalik?"
"I dreamt as much," replied Mustapha, "and I am anxious that the renegade should come on shore; but it is now dark, and he will not leave his vessel."
"We must drive away the mists of suspense by the sunbeams of hope," replied the pacha. "What am I but the sultan's slave? Shall we not indulge this evening in the water of the Giaour?"
"What saith Hafiz? It is for wine to exalt men, and raise them beyond uncertainty and doubt. It overfloweth us with courage, and imparts visions of bliss." ”

“ In an hour we met at the breakfast-table, and I was more than ever enchanted;—but I will not detain your highness by dwelling too long upon the subject.
“No, don’t, yaha bibi, my friend,” said the pacha, yawning, “your story gets very dry already. We’ll suppose the cypress waist, the stag’s eyes, and full moon of her face. We Musselmen don’t talk so much about women; but I suppose as you were a Frenchman, and very young then, you knew no better. Why you talk of women as if they had souls!” ”

“ A change of place, and their own wills. Better it were that their own wills were bound about with clamps of iron three-fold deep. Paqueta was born upon the feast of Easter, and thence took her name—for the French call Easter-day “Paque;” and a paque it was, or a festival it was, from her birth unto her death. Her hair was long and straight, and black as night; while her eyes, ox-eyes, too, were deeply blue; as if nature, knowing her mixed race, were willing to carry out the mixture by a strange compound of opposing colors. Nothing could be more delicate and tapering than her fingers ”

“ When the fight was ended, and the smoke had cleared off, and quietude had returned with death, the good wife of the commissaire reclaimed Paqueta’s body. There was no hurt upon it, she said; and about her neck she found, fastened by a little black ribbon, a very small bronze medal, which she had never seen her wear before. And now she rests, side and side with the one she loved so much, in the bosom of the Pere la Chaise.
Of all who fell upon that terrible day, Paqueta was among the noblest. She fought on neither side; knew nothing of liberty, of despotism, of forms of government ”