“It is very good of your Excellency to take such interest in me, and I’m grateful. But I protest—”
“Come, come! amigo mio! No protestations. ’Twould only be adding perjury to profligacy. Ha, ha, ha!”
And the grand dignitary leaned back in his chair, laughing. For it was but badinage, and he in no way intended lecturing the staff-colonel on his morality, nor rebuking him for any backslidings. Instead, what came after could but encourage him in such wise, his chief continuing—
“Yes, Señor Don Carlos, I’m aware of your amourettes, for which I’m not the man to be hard upon you. In that regard, I myself get the credit—so rumour says—of living in a glass house, so I cannot safely throw stones. Ha, ha!”
The tone of his laugh, with his self-satisfied look, told of his being aught but angry with rumour for so representing him.
“Well, Excellentissimo,” here put in the subordinate, “it don’t much signify what the world says, so long as one’s conscience is clear.”
“Bravo—bravissimo!” exclaimed the Most Excellent. “Ha, ha, ha!” he continued, in still louder cachinnation. “Carlos Santander turned moralist! And moralising to me! It’s enough to make a horse laugh. Ha, ha, ha!”
The staff-colonel appeared somewhat disconcerted, not knowing to what all this might be tending. However, he ventured to remark—
“I am glad to find your Excellency in such good humour this morning.”
“Ah! that’s because you’ve come to ask some favour from me, I suppose.” Santa Anna had a habit of interlarding his most familiar and friendly discourse with a little satire, sometimes very disagreeable to those he conversed with. “But never mind,” he rattled on, “though I confess some surprise at your hypocrisy, which is all thrown away upon me, amigo! I don’t at all wonder at your success with the señoritas. You’re a handsome fellow, Don Carlos; and if it weren’t for that scar on your cheek— By the way, you never told me how you came by it. You hadn’t it when you were last with us.”