It is easy to
understand why we did not speak.

I never saw him again.

SOME PORTUGUESE SKETCHES

The Portuguese are wholly inoffensive, except when their pride is
touched. In politics, or when they hunger after African territory we
fancy needed for our own people, they may not seem so. When a rebuff
excites them against the English, Lisbon may not be pleasant for
Englishmen. But in such cases would London commend itself to a
triumphant foreigner? For my own part, I found a kind of gentle,
unobtrusive politeness even among those Portuguese who knew I was
English when I went to Lisbon on the last occasion of the two nations
quarrelling about a mud flat on the Zambesi. Occasionally, on being
taken for an American, I did not correct the mistake, for having no
quarrel with Americans they sometimes confided to me the bitterness of
their hearts against the English. I stayed in Lisbon at the Hotel
Universal in the Rua Nova da Almeda, a purely Portuguese house where
only stray Englishmen came. At the _table d'hote_ one night I had a
conversation with a mild-mannered Portuguese which showed the curious
ignorance and almost childish vanity of the race. I asked him in French
if he spoke English. He did so badly and we mingled the two languages
and at last talked vivaciously. He was an ardent politician and hated
the English virulently, telling me so with curious circumlocutions. He
was of opinion, he said, that though the English were unfortunately
powerful on the sea, on land his nation was a match for us. As for the
English in Africa, he declared the Portuguese able to sweep them into
the sea. But though he hated the English, his admiration for Queen
Victoria was as unbounded as our own earth-hunger. She was, he told me,
entirely on the side of the Portuguese in the sad troubles which English
politicians were then causing. He detailed, as particularly as if he had
been present, a strange scene reported to have taken place between
Soveral, their ambassador, and Lord Salisbury, in which discussion grew
heated. It seemed as if they would part in anger. At last Soveral arose
and exclaimed with much dignity: "You must now excuse me, my Lord
Salisbury, I have to dine with the Queen to-night." My Lord Salisbury
started, looked incredulous, and said coldly, "You are playing with me.
This cannot be." "Indeed," said the ambassador, producing a telegram
from Windsor, "it is as I say." And then Salisbury turned pale, fell
back