“Welcome, a thousand times, to this house,” she said, clasping him in her arms; “and may your coming bring happiness to us both.  I will take off my things now, and say a word, to my servants, and be with you again directly.”

With that she hurried away, and Wilhelm found himself alone.  He looked about him.  The salon was luxuriously, if, according to Wilhelm’s taste, somewhat gaudily furnished.  The walls were draped in yellow silk, the portieres, window-curtains, and gilt-backed chairs being of the same brilliant hue, though its monotony was fortunately broken by numerous oil paintings, forming, as it were, dark islands in a sea of sulphur.  Opposite to the window hung two life-sized portraits of a lady and an officer.  The lady wore a Spanish costume with a mantilla, the gentleman a gorgeously embroidered general’s uniform, with a quantity of stars and orders, and the ribbon of the Grand Cross.  In another life-sized picture this personage figured in the robes of some unknown military order, and appeared a third time as a bronze bust in a corner, on a black marble pedestal.  The chimney-piece was adorned by a strange and wonderful clock, a painfully accurate copy in gilt and colored enamel of the Mihrab of the Mosque in Cordova.  Between the windows, on a high buhl cabinet, stood a marble bust of Queen Isabella, a gift, according to an inscription on the base, to her valued Adjutant-General Marquis de Henares.  A charming pastel under glass showed Pilar as a very young girl.  As Wilhelm gazed at the dewy freshness of this sixteen-year-old budding beauty, the dazzling complexion of milk and roses, the sparkle of the merry, childish eyes, an immense tenderness came over him, and he thought to himself that surely nature had not sufficiently protected all these charms against the desire they must necessarily awaken in the beholder.  Such a ravishing creature might well be excused if her heart led her astray.  How could she choose aright when her beauty roused men’s passion before she had had time to gain experience or judgment enough to defend herself?

There were a thousand other attractions in this room.  A picture, or rather a sketch, by Goya, with all the fantastic want of finish, the gorgeous dabs of color that make so many of that master’s works like the visions of delirium; on an inlaid table, a little Moorish casket, through the crystal lid of which one saw a collection of old Spanish coins of astounding dimensions; a small cabinet on the wall, containing stars and orders, with their chains, on a white satin ground; a trophy formed of a sword, gold spurs, epaulettes, and a gold-fringed scarf; here and there great Catalonian knives with open blades, daggers in rich sheaths and with engraved handles, and even an open velvet-lined case with a pair of chased ivory pistols.  Some photographs on the chimney-piece and on the gold brocade-covered piano arrested Wilhelm’s attention.  First of all, Pilar in two different positions, then the pictures of three children, a girl and two boys, and finally the full-length portrait of a gentleman in the embroidered dress coat and sword of the diplomatic service, and the handsome, vacuous, carefully groomed head of a fashion plate.