before, I had omitted to bring to the
Casino.

I immediately despatched Mike to the commissary with my luggage and orders
to ascertain when we were expected to march. He soon returned with the
intelligence that our corps was not to move before noon, so that I had yet
some hours to spare and make my adieux to the senhora.

I cannot exactly explain the reason, but I certainly did bestow a more than
common attention upon my toilet that morning. The senhora was nothing to
me. It is true she had, as she lately most candidly informed me, a score of
admirers, among whom I was not even reckoned; she was evidently a coquette
whose greatest pleasure was to sport and amuse herself with the passions
she excited in others. And even if she were not,--if her heart were to be
won to-morrow,--what claim, what right, had I to seek it? My affections
were already pledged; promised, it is true, to one who gave nothing in
return, and who, perhaps, even loved another. Ah, there was the rub; that
one confounded suspicion, lurking in the rear, chilled my courage and
wounded my spirit.

If there be anything more disheartening to an Irishman, in his little
_affaires de coeur_, than another, it is the sense of rivalry. The
obstinacy of fathers, the ill-will of mothers, the coldness, the
indifference of the lovely object herself,--obstacles though they be,--he
has tact, spirit, and perseverance to overcome them. But when a more
successful candidate for the fair presents himself; when the eye that
remains downcast at _his_ suit, lights up with animation at _another's_
coming; when the features whose cold and chilling apathy to him have
blended in one smile of welcome to another,--it is all up with him; he sees
the game lost, and throws his cards upon the table. And yet, why is this?
Why is it that he whose birthright it would seem to be sanguine when others
despond, to be confident when all else are hopeless,--should find his
courage fail him here? The reason is simply--But, in good sooth, I am
ashamed to confess it!

Having jogged on so far with my reader, in all the sober seriousness which
the matter-of-fact material of these memoirs demands, I fear lest a seeming
paradox may cause me to lose my good name for veracity; and that while
merely maintaining a national trait of my country, I may appear to be
asserting some unheard-of and absurd proposition,--so far have mere vulgar
prejudices gone to sap our character as a people.

The reason, then