"Oh, you need not explain; I know why you are at Seville instead of Madrid," interrupted Mr. Passmore. "Tasco has been with me for an hour, and all that affair is settled. I have never been so bothered with business in all my life as during these two days of your absence. As for that Miguel, whom I've got in place of the bull-fighting don, what with his bad Spanish" (that was to say, Spanish unintelligible to his English employer), "his stupidity, and his laziness, he has almost driven me crazy. I don't know whether Miguel is most ignorant, superstitious, or idle. I had determined not to have a hidalgo again as a clerk, so was content to try the son of a barber; but I soon found out my mistake. Don Alcala de Aguilera, though he might wear his sombrero with the air of a prince, had at least brains under the brim. I've half a mind," continued Passmore, lolling back in his easy-chair, "I've half a mind to ascertain whether the don is likely soon to get over the effects of his poke from the bull, and would like to come back to his desk. His fall may have brought down his pride a bit, and made him more willing to do my work and pocket my pay, like a sensible man. I'd sooner take Aguilera back to my office than endure longer this oily-fingered, garlic-scented mule of a Miguel."
"You are not aware then," said Lucius, "that Don Alcala has unhappily been arrested and taken to prison."
Passmore received the intelligence with a whistle of surprise. "Arrested for debt?" he inquired.
"No; not for debt," replied Lucius.
"If not for debt, what then?" cried Passmore. "What new prank of folly has the don managed to play when one thought him safe on a sick-bed? I bet Aguilera has been meddling with politics and burning his fingers, as every one must do who tries to fish raisins out of such a seething caldron as is always fizzing and boiling over in Spain. What was Aguilera's offence? Was it drinking in physic a health to Prim?"
"No, sir," replied the clerk; "my friend was arrested in his sick-room for merely reading the Scriptures to his household!"
I will not say that Peter Passmore sprang to his feet, for the manufacturer's bulky frame was never very quick in its movements, but he rose from his easy-chair with an exclamation by no means reverential. "He's insane, utterly insane!" cried the irritated man, "and may as well be shut up in prison as in a lunatic asylum. Was it not enough for this Spaniard narrowly to escape throwing away life by acting the picador, that he must throw away liberty also by acting the preacher?"
"I hope, sir, that you do not compare the two acts," said Lucius, with spirit.
"Both have the same root, I warrant you; both spring out of pride, the desire to be talked of," said Passmore. "Reading the Scriptures indeed! Don Alcala may make a fine clerk, he may make a superb picador (though an unlucky one, by the way), but nothing can persuade me that he can ever make a quiet, sober, matter-of-fact Protestant, like myself;" and Passmore subsided into his chair.
No; assuredly nothing could have transformed Alcala into the self-complacent worshipper of Mammon, who assumed to himself the title of a Protestant Christian.