The banquet ended, the company adjourned to the Hall of Ambassadors.
Here every one endeavored to contribute to the general amusement,
singing, improvising, telling wonderful tales, or dancing popular
dances to that all-pervading talisman of Spanish pleasure, the guitar.
The count's gifted little daughter was as usual the life and delight
of the assemblage, and I was more than ever struck with her aptness
and wonderful versatility. She took a part in two or three scenes of
elegant comedy with some of her companions, and performed them with
exquisite point and finished grace; she gave imitations of the popular
Italian singers, some serious, some comic, with a rare quality of
voice, and, I was assured, with singular fidelity; she imitated the
dialects, dances, ballads, and movements and manners of the gipsies,
and the peasants of the Vega, with equal felicity, but every thing was
done with an all-pervading grace and a lady-like tact perfectly
fascinating.
The great charm of every thing she did was its freedom from
pretension or ambitious display, its happy spontaneity. Every thing
sprang from the impulse of the moment; or was in prompt compliance
with a request. She seemed unconscious of the rarity and extent of her
own talent, and was like a child at home revelling in the buoyancy
of its own gay and innocent spirits. Indeed I was told she had never
exerted her talents in general society, but only, as at present, in
the domestic circle.
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