“From what cause? I have intelligence of you. But the thing has itself otherwise. The Angles are all very good. They incend my goods, and they intoxicate my wines. They are--what you call--well to come. They make battle with me for the Donnas, but fairly, very fairly; and with your valiant assistance I victor them. I have no complaint. Now I make adventure to say that you can speak the French tongue. I can do the very same affair, and so can my daughters two. But in this house it must not be. We will speak the Angles until you have intelligence of the Spanish. With your good indulgence, Senhor. Does that recommend itself to you?” “Excellently, Count,” said Hilary. And then, in spite of pain, he added, with his usual courtesy, “I have often longed to learn your magnificent language. This opportunity is delightful.” “I have, at this time, too prolonged,” Don Miguel answered, with such a bow as only a Spaniard can make, and a Spaniard only when highly pleased; “sleep, sir, now. The good Teresina will sit always on your head.” The good Teresina could not speak a word of any tongue but her own, and in that she could do without any answers, if only she might make to herself as many as she pleased of them. She saw that Hilary had no bones broken, nor even a bullet in his body--so far as she could yet make out--but was sadly hacked about, and worn, and weak with drains of bleeding. Therefore what he wanted now was nourishment, cold swathes, and sleep; and all of these he obtained abundantly under the care of that good nurse. Meanwhile, poor Major Clumps (to whom the Count and his daughters owed quite as much as they did to young Lorraine) did not by any means become the object of overpowering gratitude. He was neither wounded, nor picturesque; and his services, great as they were, had not been rendered in a striking manner. So that although he did his best--as most old officers are inclined to do--to get his deserts attended to, his reward (like theirs) was the unselfish pleasure of seeing inferior merit preferred. “Of course,” he cried, after a preface too powerful to have justice done to it--“of course this is what one must always expect. I get bruised, and battered, and laughed at, and swung on a door, and gagged and corded, the moment I use a good English word; and then the girls for whose sake I did it, and turned myself into a filthy butler, because I am not a smart young coxcomb, and my wounds are black instead of being red, begad, sir, they treat me as if I had been all my life their father’s butler!”