“By cock!” said the occupant of the stool, “it is an old head you wear on your shoulders, my young companion. You speak to a point. I can tell you have been to college.” “Sir, you are mistaken in this, although I come of a good family upon the side of both my parents. My uncle Nicolas is magister in the university of Salamanca; and as for my father, lately deceased, he was one of the wisest men that ever lived.” “Yes, I can see that,” said the occupant of the stool, whose voice had fallen softer than ever. “It is as plain as my hand.” Somewhat curiously, and perhaps with a little of the vanity of youth, I sought a reason for this estimate. “It is as plain as the gown of a woman of virtue,” he said, with a stealthy down-looking glance. “I have a wonderful eye for merit. You can never disguise birth and condition from one like myself. I am a former clerk of Oxford, and my lineage is such that modesty forbids me to name it before supper.” “Oxford,” said I, taking this quaint, barbarous name upon my tongue with pain. “Saving your presence, sir, what part of our great peninsula is that? It sounds not unlike the province of Galicia, where I know the dialect and the people are allowed to be a little uncivil.” “Not too quickly, my son. The university of Oxford is about a day’s journey from the centre of the world.” “Then, sir, it must be somewhere in Castile.” “Why Castile, my son?” “Madrid is in the province of Castile, and that, I believe, is generally reckoned to be the centre of the world.” “My young companion, I sit corrected,” said the occupant of the stool, with a humble air that went not at all well with his countenance. “When I was young I was always taught that the centre of the world was London; but I dare say the world has moved on a little since those days.” “London, sir!” said I; for here was another barbarous word I had never heard before. “I pray you tell me in what part of our peninsula is London.” Instead of replying to this question, the occupant of the stool began to purse his lips in an odd manner, and to rub his chin with his forefinger. “By my soul,” he said, “that is a plaguy odd question to address to an English gentleman!” “Doubtless it may be,” said I, “to one who has travelled much, and knows our great peninsula from one end to the other; but I confess I never left my native province before this morning.” “Never left your province before this morning!” said this strange person, laughing softly. “Is it conceivable? If you had kept it close it would have required great wisdom to suspect it. Your mind has been finely-trained, my young companion, and your air is so finished that I should like to see it at the court of Sophy.” I was fain to bow at so much civility. Yet he was laughing softly all the while, and there was a covert look in his eye that I mistrusted. “Would you say that I had been drinking,” said he, “if I declare to you upon my honour that London never was in Spain at all?”