“What is the sum in your poke, good Spaniard?”
“I have but eight crowns.”
“Eight crowns! Why, to hear your conversation one would think you owned a province.”
“A good sword, a devout heart, and the precepts of my noble father must serve, sir, as my kingdom,” said I, hurt not a little at the remarkable change that had come over him.
“I myself,” said he, “have always been governor and viceregent of that kingdom, and had it not been for a love of canaries in my youth, which in my middle years has yielded to a love of sherris, I must have administered it well. But there is also this essential divergence in our conditions, my son. I am one of bone and sinew, an Englishman, therefore one of Nature’s first works; whereas you, good Don, saving your worshipful presence, are but a mincing and turgid fellow, as thick in the brains as a heifer, and as yellow in the complexion as a toad under his belly. Your mind has been so depressed by provincial ideas, and your stature so wizened by the sun, that to a liberal purview they seem nowise superior to a maggot in a fig, or a blue-bottle fly in the window of a village alehouse.”
“Sir Englishman,” said I haughtily, for since I had told him I had but eight crowns in the world his manner of speaking had grown intolerable, “I do not doubt that among your own nation you are a person of merit, but it would not come amiss if you understood that you pay your addresses to a hidalgo of Spain. And I must crave leave to assure you that in his eyes one of your nation is but little superior to a heathen Arab who is as black as a coal. At least, I have always understood my father, God keep him! to say this.”
“By my faith, then,” said the Englishman, “even for a Spaniard your father must have been very ill informed.”
“Sir Richard Pendragon,” said I sternly, “I would have you be wary of the manner in which you mention my father.”
“I pray you, brother, do not make me laugh.” He trained his sidelong look upon me. “I have such an immoderately nimble humour—it has ever been the curse of my family from mother to daughter, from father to son—as doth cause the blood to commit all manner of outrages upon mine old head veins. All my ancestors died of a fluxion that did not die of steel. But I tell you, Spaniard, it is as plain as my hand that your father must have been a half-witted fellow to beget such a poor son.”
“Sir Richard Pendragon,” I cried, incensed beyond endurance, “if you abuse my father I will run you through the heart!”