had, by his especial request, come to his assistance that evening, and with two friars, who sat at the lower end of the table, were doing their best to prevent the good man from taking too bitterly to heart the present unsatisfactory state of his cathedral town, which had just been sacked and burnt by an old friend of ours. Sir Francis Drake.
"We have been great sufferers, Señors,—ah, great sufferers," snuffled the bishop, quoting Scripture, after the fashion of the day, glibly enough, but often much too irreverently for me to repeat, so boldly were his texts travestied, and so freely interlarded by grumblings at Tita and the mosquitoes. "Great sufferers, truly; but there shall be a remnant,—ah, a remnant like the shaking of the olive tree and the gleaning grapes when the vintage is done.—Ah! Gold? Yes, I trust Our Lady's mercies are not shut up, nor her arms shortened.—Look, Señors!"—and he pointed majestically out of the window. "It looks gold! it smells of gold, as I may say, by a poetical licence. Yea, the very waves, as they ripple past us, sing of gold, gold, gold!"
"It is a great privilege," said the intendant, "to have comfort so gracefully administered at once by a churchman and a scholar."
"A poet, too," said Don Pedro. "You have no notion what sweet sonnets"
"Hush, Don Pedro—hush! If I, a mateless bird, have spent an idle hour in teaching lovers how to sing, why, what of that? I am a churchman, Señors; but I am a man and I can feel, Señors; I can sympathize; I can palliate; I can excuse. Who knows better than I how much human nature lurks in us fallen sons of Adam? Tita!"
"Um?" said the trembling girl, with a true Indian grunt.
"Fill his Excellency the Intendant's glass. Does much more treasure come down, illustrious Señor? May the poor of Mary hope for a few more crumbs from their Mistress's table?"
"Not a pezo, I fear. The big white cow up there"—and he pointed to the Horqueta—"has been milked dry for this year."
"Ah!" And he looked up at the magnificent snow peak.
"Only good to cool wine with, eh? and as safe for the time being as Solomon's birds."
"Solomon's birds? Explain your recondite allusion, my lord."
"Enlighten us, your Excellency, enlighten us."
"Ah! thereby hangs a tale. You know the holy birds who run up and down on the Prado at Seville among the ladies' pretty feet,—eh? with hooked noses and cinnamon crests? Of course. Hoopoes—Upupa, as the classics have it. Well, Señors, once on a time, the story goes, these hoopoes all had golden crowns on their heads; and, Señors, they took the consequences—eh? But it befell on a day that all the birds and beasts came to do homage at the court of His Most Catholic Majesty King Solomon, and among them came these same hoopoes; and they had a little request to make, the poor rogues. And what do you think it was? Why, that King Solomon would pray for them that they might wear any
