“When we lay in Andalusia this was easy enough. What a country, to be sure! Such vineyards, such gardens, such delicious valleys, waving with corn and fat with olives; actually, it seemed a kind of dispensation of Providence to make war in. There was everything you could desire; and then, the people, like all your wealthy ones, were so timid, and so easily frightened, you could get what you pleased out of them by a little terror. My scouts managed this very well. “‘He is coming,’ they would say, ‘after to-morrow.’ “‘_Madre de Dios!_’ “‘I hope he won’t burn the village.’ “‘_Questos infernales Ingleses!_ how wicked they are.’ “‘You’d better try what a sack of moidores or doubloons might do with him; he may refuse them, but make the effort.’ “Ha!” said the major, with a long-drawn sigh, “those were pleasant times; alas, that they should ever come to an end! Well, among the old hidalgos I met there was one Don Emanuel Selvio de Tormes, an awful old miser, rich as Croesus, and suspicious as the arch-fiend himself. Lord, how I melted him down! I quartered two squadrons of horse and a troop of flying artillery upon him. How the fellows did eat! Such a consumption of wines was never heard of; and as they began to slacken a little, I took care to replace them by fresh arrivals,--fellows from the mountains, _caçadores_ they call them. At last, my friend Don Emanuel could stand it no longer, and he sent me a diplomatic envoy to negotiate terms, which, upon the whole, I must say, were fair enough; and in a few days after, the _caçadores_ were withdrawn, and I took up my quarters at the château. I have had various chances and changes in this wicked world, but I am free to confess that I never passed a more agreeable time than the seven weeks I spent there. Don Emanuel, when properly managed, became a very pleasant little fellow; Donna Maria, his wife, was a sweet creature. You need not be winking that way. Upon my life she was: rather fat, to be sure, and her age something verging upon the fifties; but she had such eyes, black as sloes, and luscious as ripe grapes; and she was always smiling and ogling, and looking so sweet. Confound me, if I think she wasn’t the most enchanting being in this world, with about ten thousand pounds’ worth of jewels upon her fingers and in her ears. I have her before me at this instant, as she used to sit in the little arbor in the garden, with a Manilla cigar in her mouth, and a little brandy-and-water--quite weak, you know--beside her. “‘Ah, General,’ she used to say--she always called me general--‘what a glorious career yours is! A soldier is _indeed_ a man.’ “Then she would look at poor Emanuel, who used to sit in a corner, holding his hand to his face, for hours, calculating interest and cent per cent, till he fell asleep.