“You know the world so thoroughly. I believe you are acquainted with every blade of grass that grows in it, and you appear to be familiar with every person of the first consideration that inhabits it.” “The varlet is not so mad after all,” he said, with a sleek air. “Now and again there is sooth in him, although the rascal is always flying off into such odd ideas. Yes, I am acquainted with the world a little, Don Miguel Jesus Maria de Sarda y Boegas--that name will be my doom!--and although I know hardly anything that is good of that part of it which is oddly called Spain--another most ridiculous sounding name to my mind!--I think I have heard of just the one person in it who will be the man for your services.” “A Spanish nobleman?” “As full of nobility as a dog is of fleas. Quarterings I know not how many; and as proud as the Fiend.” “Of what degree, sir?” “A duke, to be sure. Duke of Montesina--and as haughty as mine old and dear friend the Sophy.” “Is he diminished in his fortune, sir, and isolated from his right estate?” “Yes, by my troth. He is as bankrupt in his substance as he is in his wit. Were he not well found in virtuous principles, he would be obliged to starve like a sparrow in a hard winter.” “And is this virtuous nobleman embroiled with an enemy?” “Yes, good Don. He hath been embroiled this long while with the King of Castile, his covetous nephew and bitter foe, who seeks to add his fair castle and good lands above the city of Toledo to his own dominion. And I may tell you, Spaniard, this Castilian is like to do it, unless some wise and cunning hand arises to deny him, for that piece of old punctilio, who gets nearer to eighty every day, will soon be unable to fend him off.” “Can it be,” I cried excitedly, “that Heaven has called me to be this same wise and cunning hand? This looks uncommonly like a providence.” “Oh, my dear Don Miguel!” exclaimed the Englishman, breaking forth into another of his mighty roars of laughter, “I pray you to take pity on these fluxions of mine. If one of these days you do not lay me stark dead of an apoplexy, there is not an ounce of king’s blood in my nature.” “I am grievously surprised if my stars have not called me to some high destiny. Don Ygnacio, my father, declared as he lay dying that it was so.” “I do fear me then, good Don, this high destiny of yours will declare itself late in the day. You are as raw as a green pear. You must be set on the chimney-piece to ripen before you can be considered as a table fruit.” “You wrong me, good Sir Richard. I am determined to prove myself as soon as another. I may have no mind for stratagem, but I shall not be afeared to draw my sword for this worthy but unfortunate grandee.”