Olalla

'Now,' said the doctor, 'my part is done, and, I may say, with some
vanity, well done. It remains only to get you out of this cold and
poisonous city, and to give you two months of a pure air and an
easy conscience. The last is your affair. To the first I think I
can help you. It fells indeed rather oddly; it was but the other
day the Padre came in from the country; and as he and I are old
friends, although of contrary professions, he applied to me in a
matter of distress among some of his parishioners. This was a
family - but you are ignorant of Spain, and even the names of our
grandees are hardly known to you; suffice it, then, that they were
once great people, and are now fallen to the brink of destitution.
Nothing now belongs to them but the residencia, and certain leagues
of desert mountain, in the greater part of which not even a goat
could support life. But the house is a fine old place, and stands
at a great height among the hills, and most salubriously; and I had
no sooner heard my friend's tale, than I remembered you. I told
him I had a wounded officer, wounded in the good cause, who was now
able to make a change; and I proposed that his friends should take
you for a lodger. Instantly the Padre's face grew dark, as I had
maliciously foreseen it would. It was out of the question, he
said. Then let them starve, said I, for I have no sympathy with
tatterdemalion pride. There-upon we separated, not very content
with one another; but yesterday, to my wonder, the Padre returned
and made a submission: the difficulty, he said, he had found upon
enquiry to be less than he had feared; or, in other words, these
proud people had put their pride in their pocket. I closed with
the offer; and, subject to your approval, I have taken rooms for
you in the residencia. The air of these mountains will renew your
blood; and the quiet in which you will there live is worth all the
medicines in the world.'

'Doctor,' said I, 'you have been throughout my good angel, and your
advice is a command. But tell me, if you please, something of the
family with which I am to reside.'

'I am coming to that,' replied my friend; 'and, indeed, there is a
difficulty in the way. These beggars are, as I have said, of very
high descent and swollen with the most baseless vanity; they have
lived for some generations in a growing isolation, drawing away, on
either hand, from the rich who had now become too high for them,
and from the poor, whom they still regarded as too low; and even
to-day, when poverty forces them to unfasten their door to a guest,
they cannot do so without a most ungracious stipulation. You are
to remain, they say, a stranger; they will give you attendance, but
they refuse from the first the idea of the