“Oh!” said one of the newly-arrived, “if the general’s wife isn’t a fine one! In all my travels I have never seen her equal.”
“She is not his wife,” replied another, “so drop the ‘fine.’”
“And why should I drop it? Good words neither add to beauty nor take from it; but what do you know?”
“What they tell me; and, besides,
if she was his wife, he wouldn’t keep her so grand; for that is the way with the You-Sirs, they spend more money upon their dears than they do upon their wives.”
“Because they are afraid their mistresses will leave them for other lovers. What do you say, Lucas?”
“That it’s like keeping a lead knife in a golden sheath,” answered Lucas.
“The soul of this one may be of lead, or something cheaper, but her person—by the Moors of Barbary!”
“We hear enough,” replied Lucas; “dress up a block, and it will look like a shopman. I tell you, these good-for-nothing she vagabonds appear to me more like bedraggled rags than women.”
“Get away! If this Lucas hasn’t always the rod of justice lifted! He has entered the uniform, but the uniform hasn’t entered him. If you had been born king, they would have called you the Justiciero.”[11]