The Argosy — page 139: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Letters from Majorca. 127 critically, as I afterwards discovered. “I think she will make a charm- ing sketch.” I looked at him for a moment, but was disarmed by his innocent air. “I should have thought the girls at the Fonda del Pastor almost a prettier subject,” I remarked ; “but I am no judge.” “The old woman will be more pathetic,” said H. C., “ and pathos is everything. With this wonderful old-world town, this ancient in- fluence and atmosphere, we shall be able to compose one of those weird, solemn, gloomy effects—one of those ‘lux in tenebre’ compo- sitions that Israels so much delights in and Rembrandt has immor- talised. I feel that we shall do something that will raise our fame and hand us down to posterity. We shall find ourselves on the line in next year’s Academy. Don’t you feel very enthusiastic ?” I felt very bewildered, which was just the effect he wanted to produce. In the midst of it, we drew up to the door of the fonda: the other fonda, I concluded. It was not a very inviting place, but one must not always judge by outward appearances. It had the look of a very fourth-rate café. One sees hundreds of such places in Paris, and would as soon think of entering them as of putting to sea in a fire-engine. The door was open, and disclosed sundry chairs and tables, a distant bar, and a mysterious object that was rolling round and round apparently without hands, and seemed made for the express purpose of crushing dead men’s bones. An instrument of torture, no doubt. An old man came forward. “We are all right—the old woman’s husband,” said H. C., hastily proceeding to hand out some of our traps. “But A. said nothing about a husband,” I remonstrated. “I somehow fancy we have come to the wrong place.” “Not at all,” replied H. C. “The old woman naturally has a husband, and here he is. Very decent looking old man.” In we went. ‘‘ Mariquitarosita !” the old man called out stentorially, ‘“ come down at once.” ‘* Mariquitarosita!” I exclaimed. ‘What a long name for an old woman—and how curious! Sounds romantic. Capital title for a poem, H. C.” ‘“* Excellent,” he replied. ‘The place is brimful of subject and suggestion. I am charmed.” And he skipped gracefully into the room with a hornpipe step. Here an old lady appeared—the old lady, we concluded—and H. C. dropped the hornpipe. But instead of being eighty, she couldn’t have been sixty. And instead of coming down, she issued upwards, from lower regions. I thought A. had greatly exaggerated her charms. In fact, I felt altogether in a somewhat topsy-turvy condition. The old man led the way upstairs, and we found the rooms a great comicbooks.com