“Really, your history has amused me very much; it has all the air of a romance.”
“Quite so,” said she; “but it is a strictly historical romance. But the most amusing thing to me is that you have listened to it without weariness.”
“That is your modesty, madam; not only, has your tale interested me, but now that I know you are a Portuguese I am at peace with the nation.”
“Were you at war with us, then?”
“I have never forgiven you for letting your Portuguese Virgil die miserably two hundred years ago.”
“You mean Camoens. But the Greeks treated Homer in the same way.”
“Yes, but the faults of others are no excuse for our own.”
“You are right; but how can you like Camoens so much if you do not know Portuguese?”
“I have read a translation in Latin hexameters so well done that I fancied I was reading Virgil.”
“Is that truly so?”