"Remain in the Madre Patria, say you? To dine with St Antonio,[18] I suppose. To feast upon garlic soup, with six-and-thirty garbanzos in it, and as many drops of oil swimming on the hot water. Porquerias! No hablas como Cristiano."
"Not speak like a Christian, say you?" cried the Spaniard with a sort of comical shudder. "Jesus, Maria, y Jose! Nosotros! We, who descend from the oldest Christians of whom Castile can boast—we, whose ancestors were at the fight by Roncesvalles"——
"Pshaw! the man talks nonsense. Did we not come all the way from Acapulco to get him cured of his consumption? And now we are here, the fool will not see the doctor, because he would be obliged to call the Zambo Don, or Señor. Cursed folly!"
"Folly!" returned her better half furiously—"Folly, do you say? You may call it so; you who have not a drop of the blood of the Matanzas in your veins. Folly, quotha!" continued he with a fresh outburst of indignation; "the heroism of a Matanzas, whose three hundred forefathers must look down on him from heaven with pride and exultation, especially the great Matanzas who in the fight by Roncesvalles"——
"Roncesvalles or no Roncesvalles!" interrupted his spouse, "my ancestors were members of the Seville Consulado, Señor! remember that; and it was through them that you got your present place, and became what you now are, a richer man than all your three hundred ancestors put together; three hundred beggars, indeed, who had only three cloaks amongst them all, and as many soup-dishes, in which they begged their olla."
The Spaniard threw a scornful glance at his wife.
"We have," said he, in mighty dudgeon——"Oh! ah!" groaned the poor devil, his features twisted up with pain. "We have," he continued after a moment, "a pedigree as long as the Tacuba Street, Señora, while yours—pshaw! it would not make a mat for this room."
The man had raised himself up, and spoke in a sharp screaming voice, but the last words he uttered were half stifled by pain.
"Folly!" continued he, after a pause—"folly, do you call it! because we refuse to indulge an insolent Zambo, who dares to expect that a descendant of the great Matanzas, a viejo Cristiano, should style him Señor—a Matanzas, whose nobility is older than that of the king himself!"
And so saying, the shrivelled anatomy of a creature placed upon his head an enormous three-cornered cocked hat, with a red cockade and waving plume of feathers.