; and it was
through them that you got your present place, and became what you now are,
a richer man than all your three hundred ancestors put together; three
hundred beggars, indeed, who had only three cloaks amongst them all, and
as many soup-dishes, in which they begged their _olla_."

The Spaniard threw a scornful glance at his wife.

"We have," said he, in mighty dudgeon----"Oh! ah!" groaned the poor devil,
his features twisted up with pain. "We have," he continued after a moment,
"a pedigree as long as the Tacuba Street, Senora, while yours--pshaw! it
would not make a mat for this room."

The man had raised himself up, and spoke in a sharp screaming voice, but
the last words he uttered were half stifled by pain.

"Folly!" continued he, after a pause--"folly, do you call it! because we
refuse to indulge an insolent Zambo, who dares to expect that a descendant
of the great Matanzas, a _viejo Cristiano_, should style him Senor--a
Matanzas, whose nobility is older than that of the king himself!"

And so saying, the shrivelled anatomy of a creature placed upon his head
an enormous three-cornered cocked hat, with a red cockade and waving plume
of feathers.

"Folly! d'ye call it?" he repeated.

"Yes, folly," laughed his wife; "I would style the Zambo 'your majesty,'
if I wanted him." And she went on with her smoking and swinging. The
Spaniard took a fresh cigar out of the mulatto's box, lit it, and soon
enveloped himself and his cocked hat in a cloud of vapour.

The truce between the contending parties lasted several minutes, during
which the Spaniard sat up in his bed without any other clothing than a
flannel shirt and the cocked hat aforesaid, and his lady lay quiescent in
her hammock. She was the first to break silence.

"Matanzas, you are an old fool," cried she, "and if I were Don Toro"----

"Don him no Dons!" interrupted her husband. "He has no right to them. Ah!
oh!" groaned the suffering wretch. "No, never will we give to a miserable
Zambo the title of Senor; we, whose ancestors were at the fight of
Roncesvalles. And the dog expects that we should stand up on his entrance,
as before a _viejo Cristiano_, and greet him as Senor!"

"The standing up might be dispensed with," rejoined the lady, "seeing that
you are not able to do it."

"_We_ call the Zambo Don!" reiterated the Spaniard, "and stand up on his
entrance! Madre de Dios, what insolence! No, Senora, that shall never be,"
continued he with much s