Ricardo Palma, Peru’s delightful _littérateur_, has collected the national library since its destruction by Chilean soldiers in the late war. Storekeepers in those days wrapped up their goods in pages of “fathers of the church.” The Chileans destroyed the annals of the Inquisition. They also killed the golden oriole which had sung in the trenches early one morning before the battle had begun. The distinguished writer of Peruvian traditions sat in his long gown, reading parchment tomes of bygone centuries, his silk cap pulled down to his eyes. I sat near him at a table surrounded by books under a far-away skylight. There happened to be open a volume of historical sketches of Limaneans done in color by Pancho Fierro: a man dressed for the gallows riding beneath balconies of interested ladies; monks and nuns in every garb; Indian dances with whirls of color; the Lord Mayor’s procession with his big mace of silver, and black servants in green velvet holding a red umbrella over his head; every known variety of eatable-seller; women with bright green trousers, whose veils covered them all but one eye, and uniforms of every profession and occupation. About the time when the Puritans were landing in Massachusetts Bay, a law was passed prohibiting ladies of Lima from covering the face. The animals of the coachman in whose carriage rode ladies violating this law would be confiscated, and any man who spoke to such a lady must pay a hundred _pesos_. But enforcement of the law was too difficult, and the custom of the veil persisted until a few years since. Don Ricardo turned and put into my hands a book of his own. The sun streamed through the distant skylight. I began to read: “Odoray is the most beautiful blossom of the flower garden of America, a white lily scented with the breath of seraphim. Her soul is an aeolian harp which the sentiment of love causes to vibrate, and the sounds which it exhales are soft as the complaint of a lark. “Odoray is fifteen years old, and her heart cannot leave off throbbing before the image of the beloved of her soul. Fifteen and not love--impossible! At that age love is for the soul what the ray of spring sun is to the meadows. Her lips have the red of the coral, the aroma of the violet. They are a scarlet line above the velvet of a marguerite. “The faint tint of innocence and modesty colors her face as twilight the snow of our cordillera. The locks of hair which fall in graceful disorder over the ermine of her shoulders, imitate the gold filaments which the Father of the Incas scattered through space on a spring morning. “Her voice is loving and feeling as the echo of the _quena_ (flute). Her smile has all the charm of the wife in the Song of Solomon, all the modesty of prayer. _Svelte_ as the sugar-cane of our valleys, if the place where it has passed can be recognized, it is not on account of the trace which its short plant leaves in the sand, but by the perfume of angelic purity which lingers behind.