Indoors or out I generally had Dolores for a companion, and I could certainly not have had a more charming one. The civil war--though the little splutter on the Yí scarcely deserved that name yet--was her unfailing theme. She was never weary of singing her hero Santa Coloma's praises--his dauntless courage and patience in defeat; his strange romantic adventures; the innumerable disguises and stratagems he had resorted to when going about in his own country, where a price was set on his head; ever labouring to infuse fresh valour into his beaten, disheartened followers. That the governing party had any right to be in power, or possessed any virtue of any kind, or were, in fact, anything but an incubus and a curse to the Banda Orientál, she would not for one moment admit. To her mind her country always appeared like Andromeda bound on her rock and left weeping and desolate to be a prey to the abhorred Colorado monster; while ever to the deliverance of this lovely being came her glorious Perseus, swift as the winds of heaven, the lightnings of terrible vengeance flashing from his eyes, the might of the immortals in his strong right arm. Often she tried to persuade me to join this romantic adventurer, and it was hard, very hard, to resist her eloquent appeals, and perhaps it grew harder every day as the influence of her passionate beauty strengthened itself upon my heart. Invariably I took refuge in the argument that I was a foreigner, that I loved my country with an ardour equal to hers, and that by taking arms in the Banda Orientál I should at once divest myself of all an Englishman's rights and privileges. She scarcely had patience to listen to this argument, it seemed so trivial to her, and when she demanded other better reasons I had none to offer. I dare not quote to her the words of sulky Achilles: The distant Trojans never injured me, for that argument would have sounded even weaker to her than the former one. She had never read Homer in any language, of course, but she wouldhave quickly made me tell her about Achilles, and when the end came, with miserable Hector dragged thrice round the walls of besieged Troy--Montevideo was called Modern Troy, she knew--then she would have turned my argument against me and bidden me go and serve the Uruguayan President as Achilles served Hector. Seeing me silent, she would turn indignantly away only for a moment, however; the bright smile would quickly return, and she would exclaim, “No, no, Richard, I shall not forget my promise, though I sometimes think you try to make me do so.”