[63] This phrase often occurs in Spanish chronicles, after a long description of a man’s virtues, his charity, love of the Church, and kindness to the poor, and it is apparently inserted as at least as important a statement as any of the others. In point of fact, chronicles being written for posterity, it is the most important.
[64] “Drinking the shameful” is smoking tobacco, not drinking new whisky as in some civilised lands.
[65] I would not be taken here as wishing to disparage the prisons of my own country, or to insinuate that they are often empty.
[66] Reason, I fancy, filtered into man’s composition after the original plan was completed, and was maybe the work of the serpent.
[68] Others of his subjects admired his procedure so much that their catchword was reported to have been “Viva Fernando y vamos robando,” which after all, is but a practical application of the old Spanish aphorism “Viva el rey Baca la capa.”
[70] It is true that Herrick saw a certain beauty in our “Meadows,” or he would not have written the following stanza, but in his days there were no patent manures:
Ye have been fresh and green,
Ye have been filled with flowers;
And ye the walks have been
Where maids have spent their hours.
[71a] Difla in Arabic, from which the Spaniards have taken their word Adelfa, as from Dib, jackal, they have formed Adibe, Berk, a pond, Alberca and the like.
[71b] I.e., Roman is generally used by Arabs in North Africa when they wish to be civil to a Christian. “Caballer el rumi” has a pleasant sound, even when uttered by a man who, in his heart, thinks you a Christian dog.
[72] The Boukharis were first raised by Sultan Muley Ismael, one of the most powerful rulers the country has ever had; he flourished in the eighteenth century, and sent an ambassador to Louis XIV. to demand the hand of his daughter, which, perhaps through religious intolerance, or some other reason, was not accorded to him. The Boukharis were all negroes from the Soudan, who, belonging to no Arab tribe, were devoted to the person of the Sultan alone.