The children were a boy and a girl, and presently they began to grow up, and the boy began to think about life and to reason things out with himself.

He had, perhaps, inherited this faculty from his grandfather, on his mother's side, who was a celebrated poet and philosopher and a Spanish Jew.

So his mother, the beautiful dancer, was half Jewess, and, from her mother again, half Spanish noble; for this philosopher had eloped with the daughter of a Spanish grandee, and she was erased from the roll.

I go back this far not to weary you, but that you may understand what forces in race had to do with the boy's character.

The daughter again of this pair became an artist and a dancer, and being a highly educated, as well as a superbly beautiful woman--a woman with all Zara's charm and infinitely more chiseled features--she won the devoted love of the Emperor of the country in which they lived.