[12] One may apply to it the words of Santa Teresa—
“Tiene tan divinas mañas
Que en un tan acerbo trance
Sale triunfando del lance
Obrando grandes hazañas.”
[13] Ford considered the Basque to be as “proud as Lucifer and as combustible as his matches,” and there is a proverb, “En nave y en castillo no más que un vizcaino.” Cf. Camões. Os Lusiadas:
A gente biscainha que carece
De polidas razões e que as injurias
Muito mal dos estranhos compadece.
[14] The Castilians, said King James I. of Aragon, are very haughty and proud: de gran ufania e erguylhosos. In the Lusiads the Castilian is “grande e raro.”
[15] The line of Dante is well known: “l’avara povertà di Catalogna.” Napier speaks of “the Catalans, a fierce and constant race.”
[16] The Gallegan, “o Gallego cauto” and “sordidos Gallegos duro bando,” in Camões, ever remains the butt of Spanish wit. The inhabitants of the Montaña are considered almost equally dense: “El montañés para defender una necedad dice tres” and again “From Burgos to the sea all is stupidity.” The Asturian, of the region between Galicia and the Montaña has, rather, the reputation of a business-like shrewdness, he is the Astur avarus of Martial and Silius Italicus; in return for his boast that he has never had any infecting contact with the Moors, a proverb says: “El asturiano, loco y vano, poco fiel y mal cristiano.”
[17] “Para cantar los navarros, para llorar los franceses, para pegar cuatro tiros los mozos aragoneses.”
[18] In “El Imparcial.”
[19] It is true that he was a Spanish Basque and was merely reproducing in modern dress the scene in “Don Quixote,” in which the Biscayan leaves his mistresses unprotected in their carriage and fights in order to show that he is by birth a caballero.