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Her Gracious Majesty made a good business out of these ladies. The young
sold dear. We may imagine, with the uneasy feeling which a complicated
scandal arouses, that probably some old duchesses were thrown in cheap.
The Comprachicos were also called the Cheylas, a Hindu word, which
conveys the image of harrying a nest.
For a long time the Comprachicos only partially concealed themselves.
There is sometimes in the social order a favouring shadow thrown over
iniquitous trades, in which they thrive. In our own day we have seen an
association of the kind in Spain, under the direction of the ruffian
Ramon Selles, last from 1834 to 1866, and hold three provinces under
terror for thirty years--Valencia, Alicante, and Murcia.
Under the Stuarts, the Comprachicos were by no means in bad odour at
court. On occasions they were used for reasons of state. For James II.
they were almost an instrumentum regni. It was a time when families,
which were refractory or in the way, were dismembered; when a descent
was cut short; when heirs were suddenly suppressed. At times one branch
was defrauded to the profit of another. The Comprachicos had a genius
for disfiguration which recommended them to state policy. To disfigure
is better than to kill. There was, indeed, the Iron Mask, but that was a
mighty measure. Europe could not be peopled with iron masks, while
deformed tumblers ran about the streets without creating any surprise.
Besides, the iron mask is removable; not so the mask of flesh. You are
masked for ever by your own flesh--what can be more ingenious? The
Comprachicos worked on man as the Chinese work on trees. They had their
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