With the sweetness and loveliness of her mother, Blanche inherited the fine constitution of her father; and taught to share the sports of the Indian children, became like them, light, agile, and healthful. Crowned with the clustered roses of the Vruca, as she led the fairy train of her companions, in self-invented dances under the shade of cedars and ibiripitangas, or as sportively dragging the docile and loving Barémel in flowery chains, she flew like a breeze over the meadows, Sebastian joyed to trace the resemblance of his best beloved, in that silken hair and those large dark eyes, which as yet knew but two expressions, delight and compassion. Kara Aziek would stand leaning on the shoulder of her husband, tenderly noting the graceful varieties of Blanche’s infant figure, the glowing transparency of her skin, (set off by contrast with her dusky associates) the symmetry of her features, and those evanescent dimples which now appeared, now vanished, about her smiling mouth. All these were the characteristics of Sebastian; and a virtuous love was still the first sentiment in the constant heart of Kara Aziek, her child became dearer for resembling her husband. It was her delight to observe in her childish mind and heart, the same resemblance in properties and qualities: it was her aim to nourish, to increase, to fix them. Blanche was accustomed to hear from her infancy the eulogium of virtue, she was accustomed to see the effects produced by goodness and kindness, and she grew up therefore in such habits of active benevolence, that to have seen any one live wholly for themselves, however innocently, would have been in her eyes a sort of moral phenomenon. The tenderness of her mother and the ardour of her father, were blended in her character; but if either quality predominated, it was the feminine one of tenderness. Gaspar and Barémel were her dearest companions; at the voice of the first she would at any time fly from her gayest pastime, to go with him over the plantations he superintended, or to steal into some mountain cleft, where he discoursed to her of the old world and its inhabitants. Gaspar thought only of preparing her mind for the august station he believed her born to occupy, and he became therefore a student for her sake. The history of his own country, and of all the other European kingdoms, was now familiar to him; he collected the books which treated of their political events, their laws and customs; he tasked his memory to recollect whatever his grandfather and uncles had told him of the days of Charles V. those days in which Europe was a scene of splendid but fearful rivalry between two powerful Princes. In the misfortunes of Francis I. he found a parallel with those of his own sovereign, and cheering himself by hoping that like Francis, Sebastian would one day return to his dominions, he detailed the sufferings and the triumph of that monarch with peculiar enthusiasm.