Evil associations corrupt good manners, I suppose, which must be the excuse for a Frenchman with whom I entered into conversation in this mirthful caravanserai. I happened to show him a coin which had been passed upon me, an escudo, which would be worth a sovereign if it were not counterfeit.
"What a shame!" he exclaimed as he fingered it. "What are you going to do with it?"
"Nothing," I said. "It's useless to me."
"Lend it to me, pray."
I gave it to him, and the following night he asked me what commission I would allow him. He had passed the bad escudo in his turn. I was indignant, and accused him of having been guilty of a dishonest act. I would touch none of the proceeds of his crookedness.
"Nonsense!" he said, astonished. "I got rid of it in a hell. They're all rogues there when they have a chance."
I submit to the casuists that this was a very nice case of conscience. Winning money at cards is not earning it. He who seeks to win it is demoralized, and it is to his advantage and the advantage of society that he should be discouraged in his pernicious foolishness. Therefore, q.e.d., it was commendable to palm that base coin upon him. I was unequal to deciding the question off-hand, so I elected to take not a real of the Frenchman's equivocal profit. But if the Frenchman was to blame, was I not responsible in the first instance, as having afforded him the means of cheating his neighbour? When the casuists shall have elucidated this riddle to their satisfaction, perhaps they will oblige by telling me how many thousand angels could alight on the point of a needle.
Morality is at a low ebb in Madrid, or rather the moral code is regulated by notions peculiar to the latitude. So with habits. A man must be "native and to the manner born," before he can affect competency to interpret them. For example, when a Madrileño asseverates that his house is yours, or that his equipage which you so much admire is at your disposal, he does not intend that you should take up your residence with him there and then, or hold his coachman at your beck. It is simply a form of etiquette, a mode of speech, as of the Englishman of past generations who challenged you to mortal combat and subscribed himself "your obedient humble servant." You will be guilty of a grave solecism if you imitate that American to whom the grandee remarked with effusion that the stud which captivated his taste was his own, his very own.
"Thanks," said Brother Jonathan; "I'll take the roan and the chestnut to-day and call for the others to-morrow!"
Although a man may tender you fraudulent coinage with a brazen front, he may be keen in honour, and resent an insult to his sister with a knife-stab; although he may intrigue for a Government place with a slimy self-abasement, under circumstances the same being may go forth unflinchingly and sacrifice himself on the altar of his country. Spain is the home of paradox. The beggar is addressed as "your worship," mutiny is a venial offence, bribery of officials is a recognised prescription. At the very epoch of which I write, the murderers of Prim were stalking about the capital; it was a town-crier's secret who they were and who was the personage who was their employer, yet none had the temerity to denounce them. And in the saladero, or the "salting-tub," as the prison was called, it was notorious that there were malefactors who gave lessons in forgery, and who positively utilized their cells as convenient head-quarters from which to prey on the unwary public. Their plan was to write to somebody of position, whose name they had lighted on in a directory, and inform him that they had often heard speak of him as a citizen of integrity, and felt that they might trust him; they were singularly situated, immured for a debt of a few duros, and yet in the vicinity of his residence they were cognizant of an immense buried treasure; if he would only send them the trifle needful to pay off that debt and cover their fare to his town, they would take him with them to the site of the secret hoard, and repay him with interest for his kindness. This transparent ruse actually told with hundreds of dupes. How the auri sacra fames will deprive sane men of sense! He would be a spendthrift of sympathy who would waste his sympathy upon them.