"It afforded, therefore, some mortification to this astutious princess,--this daughter of Herodias, with more than all her mother's cunning and cruelty in her soul,--to perceive that the Spanish warriors, who on that occasion beheld for the first time the assembled nobility of Brabant and Namur, were more struck by the Teutonic charms of these fair-haired daughters of the north, (so antipodal to all we are accustomed to see in our sunburned provinces,) than by the mannered graces of her pleasure-worn Parisian belles."-- "Certain it is," observed Gonzaga, (despite his recent pledge,) "that there is no greater contrast than between our wild-eyed, glowing Andalusians, and the slow-footed, blue-eyed daughters of these northern mists, whose smiles are as moonshine to sunshine!" "After excess of sunshine, people sometimes prefer the calmer and milder radiance of the lesser light. And I promise you that, at this moment, if there be pillows sleepless yonder in the camp for the sake of the costly fragile toys called womankind, those jackasses of lovelorn lads have cause to regret the sojourn of Queen Margaret in Belgium, only as having brought forth from their castles in the Ardennes or the froggeries of the Low Country, the indigenous divinities that I would were at this moment at the bottom of their muddy moats, or of the Sambre flowing under yonder window!"-- "It is one of these Brabançon belles, then, who"-- Gabriel Nignio de Zuniga half rose from his chair, as a signal for breaking off the communication he was not allowed to pursue in his own way.--Taking counsel of himself, however, he judged that the shorter way was to tell his tale in a shorter manner, so as to set further molestation at defiance. "In one word," resumed he, with a vivacity of utterance foreign to his Spanish habits of grandiloquence, "at that ball, there appeared among the dancers of the Coranto, exhibited before the tent of state of Queen Margaret, a young girl whose tender years seemed to render the exhibition almost an indiscretion; and whose aerial figure appeared to make her sojourn there, or any other spot on earth a matter of wonder. Her dress was simple, her fair hair streamed on her shoulders. It was one of the angels of your immortal Titian, _minus_ the wings! Such was, at least, the description given me by Don John, to enable me to ascertain among the Namurrois her name and lineage, for the satisfaction (he said) of the queen, whose attention had been fascinated by her beauty." "And you proceeded, I doubt not, on your errand with all the grace and good-will I saw you put into your commission of this morning?"--cried Gonzaga, laughing.