‘Pshaw,’ said Don José, ‘colonial conquests give a man as little credit as trouble. I warrant you, you would have me—as successful a gallant as any at the court, be the second who he may,’ and here my gentleman curled his moustaches, and leant back with an air of mighty complacency,—‘you would have me waste time and incense on the female savages of this pestilent corner of the world.’ ‘Well,’ answered the old man, ‘you ought to have bridled your valour, and not have drawn upon a gentleman in waiting in the precincts of the Escurial. You have no one to blame for your banishment but yourself. Zounds, for one, court-bred as you are, and a most learned doctor in that grave science of etiquette which rules the king who rules the double empire of Old and New Spain,—you showed yourself a singular pattern of discretion.’ ‘Who could help it, most grave and tricksy Senor Davosa?’ said the other; ‘what blood of Old Castile would not have boiled over to hear an upstart, who knows not the name of his grandfather, dispute precedence with me—an Hidalgo of fifteen pure and unblemished descents? By my faith—if I had any—were the guards not all the quicker, the mushroom would speedily have been cropped from the earth, and that, by this very piece of steel,’ and the speaker touched his rapier. ‘Well,’ answered the other, ‘I hope such are not the terms of the memorial I am to carry home for you; if they be, I am likely to have but a bootless errand.’ ‘Fear nothing, man; fear nothing,’ cried Don José; ‘I know what belongs to a memorial—I know how to tickle the ears of a king. The parchment but sets forth in words that would move the mainmast of this floating-box, which you merchants and seafaring people call ship, my frenzied groupings and stumblings in this outer darkness, where no sun of royalty shines to cheer or warm my forlorn spirit. There are excellent phrases, man, excellent phrases in the thing; until I invented them I never thought I had been so ill used. When I read my own composition it affected me to tears—to tears, Davosa—as I hope it will the king. And now, when do you sail? Be speedy, my good dove, be speedy, and bring me back an olive branch as a sign that the waters are abated.’ ‘We count to weigh anchor to-morrow evening,’ replied the old merchant. ‘The freight was long of coming, the mules here being but slow-footed, otherwise we should scarce have tarried so long. Every day brings more and more risk of these accursed pirates, French and English, who so often mar our best ventures.’ ‘What! fearful, after the last pair of candlesticks you have bestowed on yonder lady, in her house upon the hill?’ ‘Blaspheme not holy things,’ interposed the older man.