ears, in which dangle heavy gold ear-rings.
She wears a large red cauliflowered-pattern
gown, and her small neat feet are protected
by strong high-lows: she is stout and thick-set,
and by no means a sylph. I don't think
the harebell would ever lift up his head
again, if her strong foot had once come on it.
She rises to the incitement of that quivering
nasal wail that the wriggling cripple doles
out from his straining throat, and, amid cries
of Jaleo, and various exclamations of delight,
sways herself slowly with balancing arms
and shuffling feet that hardly seem to move.
Gradually, as you get accustomed to the
dance, you learn to distinguish the dull
thump of the heel from the lively quick
one-two tap of the toe of her shoes, as, like a
young witch of Endor, she seems to swim
and float along the room, as if her arms, with
their balancing—right now up and left down,
then left down slowly and right up—propelled
her through some invisible medium of
sea or cloud. She might be a sea spirit or a
daughter of Lucifer, who is prince of the
powers of the air. On her face there is no
appearance but a beaming glow of quiet
pride and smouldering excitement. Every
now and then the girl lowers her arms and
begins to beat the palms of her brown hands
together to the same low incantation tune
that stirs you strangely by its supernatural
and untiring ceaselessness. Her arms, when
they sway, move in curves of perfect harmony;
and her hands, when they beat, beat in low
unison like a muffled drum. As for the
recitative song, it is more fit for Irish wake-singers
or Arab serpent-charmers than for
festive dancers, who dance to the pulsation
of their own heart-music, and what other
extraneous help Heaven may send them.
The perpetual hand-clapping is exciting
just as the perpetual low beat of the
Sioux calabash-drum is exciting. It keeps
the mind in a state of fevered tension
highly stimulating to the imagination—t?p,
t?p, t?p, t?p, it goes, like the perpetual drip,
drip, of a wet day. Now the witch-dance
grows fiercer and faster, now the lady of
Endor wriggles from side to side, backing
and sidling like a shy horse, and the double-shuffle
going on all the time in a way that
no sailor could equal; and now, to our
extreme horror, Endor suddenly twists
up her pocket-handkerchief, and, as the
solitary dancer sways nearer to me, flings it
in my lap, and closes the dance, her eyes
laughing, her ear-rings bobbing. She sits
down mid shouts of applause and cries of
Jaleo! the paralytic boy wriggling like a
scotched snake to express his delight and
patronising approval. The big brother is also
ultra-cunning and much satisfied. The guitar
bends forward and bows his personal thanks.
José-Maria looks not pleased. Josée-Maria
thinks the Romalis nothing to the Bolero,
and is evidently jealous.

Rose comes to me, after much dumb-show
and unsuccessful telegraphing. I get him to
understand that I want to know what I am
to do with the Witch of Endor's handkerchief.
Did not sultans sometimes fling ladies
handkerchiefs for Mormon purposes? Could
I have won the witch's heart at a glance? I,
who never won anybody but old Miss Truffles,
who is always falling in love with quiet, unresisting
men? Rose answers me (in spite of
all my signs that he should speak very
low) in a loud, unfeeling, vulgar voice, evidently
despising Jezebel; who smiles stiffly
through her paint, and fat old Pepe Blanco,
who pretends he is not looking my way,
engages in conversation with the guitar with
unmeaning and spasmodic earnestness. Rose
tells me in a blustering voice (to show everybody
that he is my chief adviser, counsellor,
and friend) that this throwing the handkerchief
is a regular custom, and merely means
that, as a stranger and foreigner, I am expected
to make her a present. I must roll
up half a dollar in the handkerchief, and
return it with a careless bow (as if she had
shown me a favour) to the lady. I do not
much like the ceremony—am afraid of giving
too little, not too much—and grumble like a
true Englishman at paying twice over. I do
it with a bow worthy of the roué young
Duke of Richelieu, and, defying Jezebel,
return to my seat, falling over my own stick,
and disregarding all stares and whispers.

Then comes a Malaga dance and various
Sequadillas, Boleros, Manchegas, Malagenas,
and Rondenas. There are romances sung on
the true Figaro principle, that "what they
did not think worth saying they sang."

"Now then, gentlemens, they are going to
do the Malaga dance, describing the bull-fight."

It is not Jezebel, nor the Witch of Endor,
nor Herodias, who dances the Malagena, nor
that little five year old puppet who, with
side-curls, fan, and castanets, apes the
woman with grave accuracy. No; it is
Lola, a baker's daughter, a neat little quiet
girl in black, who laments her want of the
short dancing dress of a real Maja. She
misses the waves of rose-colour and silver
from which a Maja floats in the dance, like
Venus rising from a sunset sea; but still,
with a smiling face and brave heart, being
the only Malaga girl present, and not without
views of the stage, Lola, nodded on by
an encouraging mother, passes from stately
walk into stately dancing positions and,
crescendoing by degrees, rises to the full
free dance, which is of a measured minuet
character, and seems to need no partners.
It is a performance, in fact, of grave beauty,
rising to swiftness like a fire that fans and
waves itself into wider flame, and resembling
the court minuet that cost John the Baptist
his head. Her arms are Diana-like in their
curving sway and balance. But now, passing
a small scarlet flag over her left arm, she
waves it to and fro in time to the dance.