ing to the modest and sober-minded Englishman, who would often
have fancied him inspired by usquebaugh, had he not had ocular proof of
his extreme abstemiousness.

"Miserable?" said he, one night in one of these fits. "And have I not
a right to be miserable? Why should I not curse the virgin and all the
saints, and die? I have not a friend, not a ducat on earth; not even a
sword--hell and the furies! It was my all: the only bequest I ever had
from my father, and I lived by it and earned by it. Two years ago I had
as pretty a sum of gold as cavalier could wish--and now!"--

"What is become of it, then? I cannot hear that our men plundered you of
any."

"Your men? No, senor! What fifty men dared not have done, one woman did!
a painted, patched, fucused, periwigged, bolstered, Charybdis, cannibal,
Megaera, Lamia! Why did I ever go near that cursed Naples, the common
sewer of Europe? whose women, I believe, would be swallowed up by
Vesuvius to-morrow, if it were not that Belphegor is afraid of their
making the pit itself too hot to hold him. Well, sir, she had all of
mine and more; and when all was gone in wine and dice, woodcocks' brains
and ortolans' tongues, I met the witch walking with another man. I had
a sword and a dagger; I gave him the first (though the dog fought well
enough, to give him his due), and her the second; left them lying across
each other, and fled for my life,--and here I am! after twenty years of
fighting, from the Levant to the Orellana--for I began ere I had a
hair on my chin--and this is the end!--No, it is not! I'll have that El
Dorado yet! the Adelantado made Berreo, when he gave him his daughter,
swear that he would hunt for it, through life and death.--We'll see
who finds it first, he or I. He's a bungler; Orsua was a bungler--Pooh!
Cortes and Pizarro? we'll see whether there are not as good Castilians
as they left still. I can do it, senor. I know a track, a plan; over the
Llanos is the road; and I'll be Emperor of Manoa yet--possess the jewels
of all the Incas; and gold, gold! Pizarro was a beggar to what I will
be!"

Conceive, sir, he broke forth during another of these peacock fits,
as Amyas and he were riding along the hill-side; "conceive! with forty
chosen cavaliers (what need of more?) I present myself before the golden
king, trembling amid his myriad guards at the new miracle of the mailed
centaurs of the West; and without dismounting, I approach his throne,
lift the crucifix whic