prouder fellow-officers; and the common appellation of _Pinos_, “pine-trees”--alluding, probably, to the height required in a serjeant, like that of _freedman_, among the Romans, implies a stain which the first situations in the army cannot completely obliterate. _Noblesse_, as I shall call it, to avoid an equivocal term, descends from the father to all his male children, for ever. But though a female cannot transmit this privilege to her issue, her being the daughter of an _Hidalgo_ is of absolute necessity to constitute what, in the language of the country, is called, “a nobleman on four sides”--_noble de quatro costados_: that is, a man whose parents, their parents, and their parents’ parents, belonged to the privileged class. None but these _square noblemen_ can receive the order of knighthood. But we are fallen on degenerate times, and I could name many a knight in this town who has been furnished with more than one _corner_ by the dexterity of the _notaries_, who act as secretaries in collecting and drawing up the proofs and documents required on these occasions. There exists another distinction of blood, which, I think, is peculiar to Spain, and to which the mass of the people are so blindly attached, that the meanest peasant looks upon the want of it as a source of misery and degradation, which he is doomed to transmit to his latest posterity. The least mixture of African, Indian, Moorish, or Jewish blood, taints a whole family to the most distant generation. Nor does the knowledge of such a fact die away in the course of years, or become unnoticed from the obscurity and humbleness of the parties. Not a child in this populous city is ignorant that a family, who, beyond the memory of man have kept a confectioner’s shop in the central part of the town, had one of their ancestors punished by the Inquisition for a relapse into Judaism. I well recollect how, when a boy, I often passed that way, scarcely venturing to cast a side glance on a pretty young woman who constantly attended the shop, for fear, as I said to myself, of shaming her. A person free from tainted blood is defined by law, “an old Christian, clean from all bad race and stain,” _Christiano viejo, limpio de toda mala raza, y mancha_. The severity of this law, or rather of the public opinion enforcing it, shuts out its victims from every employment in church or state, and excludes them even from the _Fraternities_, or religious associations, which are otherwise open to persons of the lowest ranks. I verily believe, that were St. Peter a Spaniard, he would either deny admittance into heaven to people of tainted blood, or send them to a retired corner, where they might not offend the eyes of the _old Christians_.