"Disgraceful!" chimed in the voice of one of the young half-breeds; "utterly disgraceful! Just look there! there goes Don Fernando! see him how he drives along in his chariot drawn by horses! Don Fernando d'Aguillo! he can scarcely afford to buy a dinner for his coachman, and yet look at the air with which he lords it about the Plaza! Look, there's another of them! the Marquis Don Vegal!"
A splendid carriage at that moment turned into the Plaza, and proved in truth to belong to the Marquis Don Vegal, Chevalier of Alcantara, of Malta, and of Charles III. The nobleman had come out only to relieve the tedium of the evening, and with no thought of ostentation or display. As he sat with his head bent in anxious care, he paid no regard to the envious sneers with which the groups of half-breeds greeted him while his carriage and four dashed through the crowd.
"I hate that man," growled André Certa.
"Ah! you will not need to hate him long," replied one of the young men.
"Perhaps not," said André. "These lordlings have seen nearly the last of their luxuries, and have pretty well exhausted all their jewels and family plate."
"Yes, indeed; no one knows that better than yourself, familiar as you are with old Samuel the Jew."
"True; the old Jew's ledger shows plenty of credit and lots of debt, and his strong box is full to the hasp with the débris of the fine fortunes of the old aristocrats. But the day isn't far off, and a jolly day it will be, when these Spaniards will all be beggars, like their own Caesar de Bazan."
"Capital, André," put in Millaflores; "and then you will mount upon your own millions, and double them besides. But when do you marry old Samuel's daughter? Sarah is a true child of Lima, a Peruvian to the very tips of her fingers; nothing of the Jewess about her except her name."
"Oh, within a month," said André. "In another month there will not be a fortune in the land to compete with mine."
"But why," was the inquiry of one of the admiring group, "why don't you marry the daughter of some Spaniard who can boast a noble lineage?"
"Because I despise the race as much as I hate it," replied
