“Marry a Spanish woman for money!” said I. “Who’d lick honey off a thorn?”
“And why would not you marry a Spanish woman, money or no money?” said he. “Do not you know that the best and oldest blood in the world runs in Spanish veins? You seem to sneer at the mention of old blood.”
“Not at all.”
“Give me old blood in a woman. With old blood you associate all the elegances, all the graces and aromas in the bearing and conduct of human nature. Vulgarity makes a toad of beauty itself. Think of Venus saying ‘’Ave done,’ and bragging of her jewelry.”
“What is a lady?”
“I expected that question. Cannot you define what any chambermaid or boots can distinguish; what any shopman, waiter, poor sailor man like you or me, can instantly recognize? Marry, come up. What is more teasing than the question, ‘What is a gentleman?’ Cocky Mr. Macaroni, with his hat over his eye and his hair dressed in imitation of his betters, says, ‘Vat’s a gentleman?’ and the beast knows the thing every time he sees it.”
“How is the pain in your side?”
“Well, it makes me wince when I move as I did then. How strange,” said he, sinking his voice and looking at the island, “that I, who have been dreaming of galleons all my life, should, of the scores whose keels have cut these waters, be the one chosen to light upon yonder ship of dollars.”
“Shall you fire her before sailing?”
“No. We will leave her for the next man who may come along—for some poor devil to whom a few serons of cocoa and a thousand quintals of tin may be what the Cockney calls an ‘object.’”