Father Gonzales and Grandfather Fortuny went out and bought two fowls, three bottles, and a loaf of bread a yard long.

Mariano made all preparations to start for Rome.  But the night before the journey was to begin, conscription officers came to his lodging and told him to consider himself under arrest—­he must serve the State as a soldier.

It seems that the laws of Spain are such that any citizen can be called on to carry arms at any moment; and there are officials who do little but lie in wait for those who can pay, but have no time to fight.  These officials are more intent on bleeding their countrymen than the enemy.

Mariano applied to his friend Madrazo for advice as to what to do, and Madrazo simply cut the Gordian knot by paying out of his own purse three hundred dollars to secure the release of the young artist.

And so Mariano started gaily away, carrying with him the heart’s love of two old men, and the admiring affection of a whole school.

The grandfather died three months afterward—­went babbling down into the Valley, making prophecies to the last to the effect that Mariano Fortuny would yet win deathless fame.

And Father Gonzales lived to see these prophecies fulfilled.

* * * * *

Then, at twenty-two, Fortuny was ordered by the city of Barcelona to accompany General Prim on his Algerian expedition, it was a milepost on his highway of success.

Nominally he was secretary to the General.  Who it was secured his appointment he never knew; but we have reason to suppose it was Federico Madrazo.

Fortuny’s two years in Rome had just expired; his Barcelona friends knew that the time had been well spent, and the opportunities improved, and a further transplantation they believed would result in an increased blossoming.

“Enter into life!  Enter into life!” was the call of a prophet long ago.  In barbaric Africa, Fortuny entered into life with the same fine, free, eager, receptive spirit that he had elsewhere shown.  General Prim, soldier and scholar, saw that his secretary was capable of doing something more than keeping accounts, and so a substitute was hired and Fortuny was sent here and there as messenger, but in reality, so that he could see as many sides of old Moorish life as possible.

Staid old General Prim loved the young man just as Madrazo had.  Fortuny was not much of a soldier, for war did not interest him, save from its picturesque side.  “War is transient, but Beauty is eternal,” he once said.

Even the fact that the Spanish Army was now on the soil of her ancient enemy, the Moor, did not stir his patriotism.

He sketched with feverish industry, fearing the war would end too soon, and he would have to go back with empty sketchbooks.  The long stretches of white sands, the glaring sunshine, the paradox of riotous riches and ragged poverty, the veiled women, blinking camels, long rifles with butts inlaid with silver, swords whose hilts are set with precious stones, gray Arab horses with tails sweeping the ground, and everywhere the flutter of rags—­these things bore in on his artist-nature and filled his heart.