For my own part, full of impatience to see a town which I had so often heard extolled for its beauty, I went out of the governor's palace with the intention of walking through the streets. At the gate a man accosted me with the following address: Will Signor de Santillane allow me to take the liberty of paying my respects to him? I asked him who and what he was. I am Don Cæsar's valet-de-chambre, answered he, but was one of his ordinary footmen during your stewardship; I used to make my court to you every morning, and you used to take a great deal of notice of me. I regularly gave you intelligence of what was passing in the house. Do you recollect my apprising you one day that the village surgeon of Ley va was privately admitted into Dame Lorenza Sephora's bedchamber? It is a circumstance which I have by no means forgotten, replied I. But now that we are talking of that formidable duenna, what is become of her? Alas! resumed he, the poor creature moped and dwindled after your departure, and at length gave up the ghost, more to the grief of Seraphina than of Don Alphonso, who seemed to consider her death as no great evil. Don Cæsar's valet-de-chambre, having thus acquainted me with Sephora's melancholy end, made a humble apology for having presumed to stop my walk, and then left me to continue my progress. I could not help paying the tribute of a sigh to the memory of that ill-fated duenna; and her decease affected me the more because I taxed myself with that melancholy catastrophe, though a moment's reflection would have convinced me that the grave owed its precious prey to the inroads of her cancer, rather than to the cruel charms of my person. I looked with an eye of pleasure upon everything worth notice in the town. The archbishop's marble palace feasted my eyes with all the magnificence of architecture; nor were the piazzas which surrounded the exchange much inferior in commercial grandeur; but a large building at a distance, with a great crowd standing before the doors, attracted all my attention. I went nearer, to ascertain the reason why so great a concourse of both sexes was collected, and was soon let into the secret by reading the following inscription in letters of gold on a tablet of black marble over the door: _La Posada de los Representantes_.[*] The play-bills announced for that day a new tragedy, never performed, and gave the name of Don Gabriel Triaquero as the author. [*] The theatre. _CHAPTER V._ _GIL BLAS GOES TO THE PLAY, AND SEES A NEW TRAGEDY. THE SUCCESS OF THE PIECE. THE PUBLIC TASTE AT VALENCIA._