'_Ventrebleu!_ for as many reasons as there are craft in the harbor.' 'For example?' 'Well, that I should have got a place in a ship's company that he was trying for.' 'Such things as that? is it possible?' 'Oh, for smaller things. That a lass should have given me a dozen oranges she had promised him.' 'How odd!' said Madame Bernier, with a shrill kind of laugh. 'A man who owed you a grudge of this kind would just come up and stab you, I suppose, and think nothing of it?' 'Precisely. Drive a knife up to the hilt into your back, with an oath, and slice open a melon with it, with a song, five minutes afterward.' 'And when a person is afraid, or ashamed, or in some way unable to take revenge himself, does he--or it may be a woman--does she, get some one else to do it for her?' '_Parbleu!_ Poor devils on the lookout for such work are as plentiful all along the South American coast as _commissionaires_ on the street corners here.' The ferryman was evidently surprised at the fascination possessed by this infamous topic for so lady-like a person; but having, as you see, a very ready tongue, it is probable that his delight in being able to give her information and hear himself talk were still greater. 'And then down there,' he went on, 'they never forget a grudge. If a fellow doesn't serve you one day, he'll do it another. A Spaniard's hatred is like lost sleep--you can put it off for a time, but it will gripe you in the end. The rascals always keep their promises to themselves.... An enemy on shipboard is jolly fun. It's like bulls tethered in the same field. You can't stand still half a minute except against a wall. Even when he makes friends with you, his favors never taste right. Messing with him is like drinking out of a pewter mug. And so it is everywhere. Let your shadow once flit across a Spaniard's path, and he'll always see it there. If you've never lived in any but these damned clockworky European towns, you can't imagine the state of things in a South American seaport--one half the population waiting round the corner for the other half. But I don't see that it's so much better here, where every man's a spy on every other. There you meet an assassin at every turn, here a _sergent de ville_..... At all events, the life _la bas_ used to remind me, more than anything else, of sailing in a shallow channel, where you don't know what infernal rock you may ground on. Every man has a standing account with his neighbor, just as madame has at her _fournisseur's_; and, _ma foi_, those are the only accounts they settle. The master of the _Santiago_ may pay me one of these days for the pretty names I heaved after him when we parted company, but he'll never pay me my wages.' A short pause followed this exposition of the virtues of the Spaniard. 'You yourself never put a man out of the world, then?' resumed Hortense. 'Oh, _que si_!.... Are you horrified?' 'Not at all. I know that the thing is often justifiable.'