This insolent disdain of my country—for how else could a true son of Iberia regard such words?—gave me such an anger against the Englishman that I declined to speak with him for some time. No sooner did he discover the cause of my silence than his language grew still more licentious. “Pyrenees forsooth!” he exclaimed. “Mountains, ecod! Does the poor mad soul think I was born at Dublin?”
Thereupon I withdrew my horse fifty paces to the rear, for I was determined that I would not remain in the company of one who wounded my country. Then it was that his demeanour changed. He made quite a handsome apology to Spain, withal accompanied by such a whimsical pleasantness that I was fain to forgive him, although exacting the condition that whatever was the higher merit of his native England, which I could not for a moment accept, he would make abatement of it in my presence.
Upon this Sir Richard Pendragon bent forward and whispered in the ear of the extraordinary quadruped he was bestriding, for he had the habit of talking continually to this most strange beast. “’Tis a hard condition, is it not, good Melanto, for you and me that have such opinions of our own? But this youthful Don is a mad fellow, is he not, Melanto? Yet with the permission of Heaven you and I will always respect the whims of madness.”
Among other things, as became my elevation of mind, I had wondered many times why this singular quadruped—horse I will not call it—should bear such a remarkable name. It appeared to be the height of idiosyncrasy to bestow upon a four-footed beast a name which could only have been familiar to scholars. And so, to appease my curiosity and to change the unlucky tenor of our discourse, I said, “Wherefore, kind and gracious Sir Richard Pendragon, do you call your four-footed quadruped by the name of Melanto? Is not the name passing odd for a shaggy animal with a long tail?”
“Well, my young companion, if you must know the reason,” said the Englishman, “he owes the name of Melanto to his preoccupation with the things of the mind.”
“Is that the name of one of the learned?” I asked dubiously, because I had to confess that to myself it was wholly dark.
“Melanto,” said Sir Richard Pendragon, “was the name of a learned Mongolian who founded a religious order. First a sea captain, he became an astrologer in his later years, in order that he might confer with the stars in their courses and the works of nature.”
“I was ignorant of these facts,” I owned humbly, for Sir Richard seemed to imply that an enlightened mind should be familiar with these things, “but doubtless they are well acquainted with them at Salamanca.”
“Doubtless they are, good Don,” said Sir Richard Pendragon gravely.
At this moment the Count of Nullepart was so shaken with laughter that I feared he might fall from his horse. Upon what pretext he indulged it I do not know; but as he was much addicted to mirth which seemed without any true cause to call it forth, I was fain to ascribe it to his French nationality, which, as all the world knows, has too little regard for the light of reason.