“And what did they do?”
“The Marquis D’Almavivas was coming up to Seville in the boat, and they behaved to him in the most outrageous manner. He is here now and is going to give a series of fêtes. Of course he will not ask a single Englishman.”
“We shall manage to live even though the Marquis D’Almavivas may frown upon us,” said I, proudly.
“He is the richest, and also the best of our noblemen,” continued Maria; “and I never heard of anything so absurd as what they did to him. It made me blush when Don — told me.” Don Tomàs, I thought she said.
“If he be the best of your noblemen, how comes it that he is angry because he has met two vulgar men? It is not to be supposed that every Englishman is a gentleman.”
“Angry! Oh, no! he was not angry; he enjoyed the joke too much for that. He got completely the best of them, though they did not know it; poor fools! How would your Lord John Russell behave if two Spaniards in an English railway carriage were to pull him about and tear his clothes?”
“He would give them in charge to a policeman, of course,” said I, speaking of such a matter with the contempt it deserved.
“If that were done here your ambassador would be demanding national explanations. But Almavivas did much better;—he laughed at them without letting them know it.”
“But do you mean that they took hold of him violently, without any provocation? They must have been drunk.”
“Oh, no, they were sober enough. I did not see it, so I do not quite know exactly how it was, but I understand that they committed themselves most absurdly, absolutely took hold of his coat and tore it, and—; but they did such ridiculous things that I cannot tell you.” And yet Don Tomàs, if that was the man’s name, had been able to tell her, and she had been able to listen to him.