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deny it; I can even imagine them having me exhumed and bribing a few know-it-alls to certify according to all their knowledge that the proportions and pose of my poor bones do not match those of the painted woman. But they won’t get away with it. And, even if they did get away with it, scientific treatises are always forgottensooner or later, whereas art is alive and always will be. And I, the Duchess of Alba, will not die so that my passions and the love which consumed me may die with me, as happens in the case of other beautiful women, but so that they may live forever on canvases that I and only I was capable of inspiring.
    Do you know what it is like to have a new lover every day? You can imagine that, can’t you, you nun, hiding yourself behind that cross that I’d like to have you crucified on? It is so much work it leaves you exhausted, and what is more, it is tedious. Those two students I’d left standing the night of the Caracol Loco—I went back to look for them and I brought them to my house, remember? I raised a toast to Francisco with them. I drank to forget, for a new meeting, and yet again to forget. When they were drunk, I sent them on their way.
    I had other students. The ones who excited me especially were the theologians because when I embraced them I imagined them dressed in black, unloading a sermon on morality from the pulpit. I had generals and common soldiers, writers, and musicians who were even more unbearable and egocentric, more divos than the literati, but, above all, I had a fair quantity of majos . To get rid of them, I made them believe I had a jealous husband. I had them leave through the window; I pretended I was helping them to escape, but I forced them to jump from the first floor and then set the dogs on them to make them run. How ridiculous they were when they jumped and yelled! What fun I had! But deep down the whole thing tired and bored me, and if itwasn’t for the fact that I wanted to ridicule Queen María Luisa, I would have abandoned that particular form of amusement.
    At that time María Luisa had that French lover who looked like an actor, or rather, an Italian opera singer. Wasn’t he Italian, after all? I decided I would take the queen’s concubine away from her. I went against the queen’s characteristic bad taste as regarded music—Lully, how dreadful!—by arranging that Gluck and Haydn were played to and appreciated by Madrid, in the same way I managed to get Costillares, the bullfighter, accepted despite the general predilection for Romero—even though both of them were more obtuse than the bulls they killed—so it was that I managed to take the queen’s lover away from her. At one dinner I made him sit next to me. To topple the royal lover from his pedestal I had only to rub his left thigh with my right leg, gently and not so gently, and to inform him after dinner of the well-known confidential fact that my husband did not fulfill all my needs. I took him to my chambers. All of this was nothing but cheap maneuvering, but really the queen’s lover required little else. I left him so hungry for more that over the next few days he came like a whining dog wanting only that I would let him lick my hand alone, but I refused to receive him until he sent me a gift: a box of gold encrusted with diamonds, one of the gifts that the queen had given him.
    Afterward I was able to do with him as I pleased, but I didn’t once really sleep with him. To allow into me one who had drooled over the queen would have disgusted me. Meanwhile I gave the gold box to my hairdresser, the same one who also looked after the queen’s coiffures, and I suggested that he useit to keep one of the rare pomades he used when arranging the royal hairs. It was thanks to this small amusement that the first attempt to burn down my palace in the Moncloa was made. The queen’s retaliations were never very subtle.
    But the days went by and Francisco didn’t come. More than once I prepared to go and