“It is not convenient to discuss the subject now. I will see Isabel; she is a good child--my only comfort. Paciencia! there is Luis Alveda singing; Isabel will now be deaf to all else”; and she rose with a sigh and walked towards the casement looking into the garden. Luis was coming up the oleander walk. The pretty trees were thinner now, and had only a pink blossom here and there. But the bright winter sun shone through them, and fell upon Luis and Isabel. For she had also seen him coming, and had gone to meet him, with a little rainbow-tinted shawl over her head. She looked so piquant and so happy. She seemed such a proper mate for the handsome youth at her side that a word of dissent was not possible. The doctor said only, “She is so like you, Maria. I remember when you were still more lovely, and when from your balcony you made me with a smile the happiest man in the world.” Such words were never lost ones; for the Senora had a true and great love for her husband. She gave him again a smile, she put her hand in his, and then there were no further conciliations required. They stood in the sunshine of their own hearts, and listened a moment to the gay youth, singing, how at-- The strong old Alamo Two hundred men, with rifles true, Shot down a thousand of the foe, And broke the triple ramparts through; And dropped the flag as black as night, For Freedom’s green and red and white.[3] CHAPTER XI. A HAPPY TRUCE. “Well, honor is the subject of my story; I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but for my single self, I had as lief not be, as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself.” “Two truths are told As happy prologues to the swelling act, Of the imperial theme.” “This is the eve of Christmas, No sleep from night to morn; The Virgin is in travail, At twelve will the Child be born.” Cities have not only a certain physiognomy; they have also a decided mental and moral character, and a definite political tendency. There are good and bad cities, artistic and commercial cities, scholarly and manufacturing cities, aristocratic and radical cities. San Antonio, in its political and social character, was a thoroughly radical city. Its population, composed in a large measure of adventurous units from various nationalities, had that fluid rather than fixed character, which is susceptible to new ideas. For they were generally men who had found the restraints of the centuries behind them to be intolerable--men to whom freedom was the grand ideal of life.