“But the Baltimoreans only admired my pictures,—­they did not buy them; they only wondered at my polyglot accomplishment, and were content with ringing silly-kind changes on an Encyclopaedic compliment about the Admirable Crichton, and other well-educated personages, to be found alphabetically embalmed in Conversations-Lexicons,—­they did not inquire into my system of teaching, or have quarterly knowledge of my charges.  So I fled from Baltimore, pretty speeches, and starvation, to San Francisco, plain talk, and pure gold.  And now—­see here, Sir!—­I carry these always about with me, lest the pretty pickings of this Tom Tiddler’s ground should make my experience forget.”

He drew from his pocket an “illuminated” card, bearing a likeness of Queen Victoria, and a creased and soiled bit of yellow paper.  The one was, by royal favor, a complimentary pass to a reserved place in Westminster Abbey, on the occasion of the coronation of her Britannic Majesty, “For the Senor Camillo Alvarez y Pintal, Chevalier of the Noble Order of the Cid, Secretary to His Catholic Majesty’s Legation near the Court of St. James,”—­the other, a Sydney pawnbroker’s ticket for books pledged by “Mr. Camilla Allverris i Pintal.”  He held these contrasted certificates of Fortune,—­her mocking visiting-cards, when she called on him in palace and in cabin,—­one in each hand for a moment; and bitterly smiling, and shaking his head, turned from one to the other.  Then suddenly he let them fall to the ground, and, burying his face in his hands, was roughly shaken through all his frame by a great gust of agony.

I laid my hand tenderly on his shoulder:  “But, Pintal,” I said,—­“the Lady Angelica,—­tell me why she chose that course.”

In a moment the man was fiercely aroused.  “Ah, true!  I had forgotten that delectable passage in my story.  Why, man, Bermudez went to her, told her that my aspirations and my prospects were so and so,—­faring, brilliant,—­that she, only she, stood in the way, an impassable stumbling-block to my glorious advancement,—­told her, (devil!) that, with all my fine passion for her, he was aware that I was not without embarrassment on this score,—­appealed to her disinterested love, to her pride,—­don’t you see?—­to her pride.”

“And where is she now, Pintal?”

No anger now, no flush of excitement;—­the man, all softened as by an angel’s touch, arose, and, with clasped hands and eyes upturned devoutly, smiled through big tears, and without a word answered me.

I, too, was silent.  Whittier had not yet written,—­

  “Of all sad words of tongue or pen
  The saddest are these:  ‘It might have been!’

  “Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
  Deeply buried from human eyes;

  “And, in the hereafter, angels may
  Roll the stone from its grave away!”

Then Pintal paced briskly to and fro a few turns across the narrow floor of his tent, and presently stopping, said,—­his first cheerfulness, with its unwonted smile, returning,—­