ctly as the friars do,--this is
the sum of her courtesy, her policy. The poor old lady soon became
bored, and taking advantage of the noise of a plate breaking, rushed
precipitately away, muttering, "_Jesus!_ Just wait, you rascals!" and
failed to reappear.

The men, for their part, are making more of a stir. Some cadets
in one corner are conversing in a lively manner but in low tones,
looking around now and then to point out different persons in the room
while they laugh more or less openly among themselves. In contrast,
two foreigners dressed in white are promenading silently from one end
of the room to the other with their hands crossed behind their backs,
like the bored passengers on the deck of a ship. All the interest and
the greatest animation proceed from a group composed of two priests,
two civilians, and a soldier who are seated around a small table on
which are seen bottles of wine and English biscuits.

The soldier, a tall, elderly lieutenant with an austere countenance--a
Duke of Alva straggling behind in the roster of the Civil Guard--talks
little, but in a harsh, curt way. One of the priests, a youthful
Dominican friar, handsome, graceful, polished as the gold-mounted
eyeglasses he wears, maintains a premature gravity. He is the curate
of Binondo and has been in former years a professor in the college of
San Juan de Letran, [16] where he enjoyed the reputation of being a
consummate dialectician, so much so that in the days when the sons
of Guzman [17] still dared to match themselves in subtleties with
laymen, the able disputant B. de Luna had never been able either to
catch or to confuse him, the distinctions made by Fray Sibyla leaving
his opponent in the situation of a fisherman who tries to catch eels
with a lasso. The Dominican says little, appearing to weigh his words.

Quite in contrast, the other priest, a Franciscan, talks much and
gesticulates more. In spite of the fact that his hair is beginning to
turn gray, he seems to be preserving well his robust constitution,
while his regular features, his rather disquieting glance, his wide
jaws and herculean frame give him the appearance of a Roman noble in
disguise and make us involuntarily recall one of those three monks of
whom Heine tells in his "Gods in Exile," who at the September equinox
in the Tyrol used to cross a lake at midnight and each time place in
the hand of the poor boatman a silver piece, cold as ice, which left
him full of terror. [