“He’s not in the least like that, Guy,” laughed Concha; “he’s more like some eighteenth-century highland shepherd teaching himself Greek out of a Greek Testament,” she added, rather prettily.
“Yes, and having religious doubts, which are resolved by an examination of the elaborate anatomy of a horse’s skull found on the moors—it’s all the same, only more picturesque.”
“And why are you so angry with our friend Mr. Munroe, Guy?” asked the Doña.
“Oh, I don’t know! I’m like Nietsche, I hate ‘women, cows, Scotsmen, and all democrats,’” and he gave an irritated little wriggle.
How waspish the little creature had become! But who can draw up a scale of suffering and say that an aching heart is easier to bear than a wounded vanity?
“Well, you haven’t told us anything about Spain,” said Concha.
“Oh, there’s nothing to tell ... it’s a threadbare theme; _Childe Harold_ has already been written.... Of course, the theme of Don Juan lends itself to perennial treatment....”
The Doña laughed softly: “But it is so unjust that Don Juan Tenorio is supposed only to be found in Spain!”
“No more unjust than that Jesus Christ should be looked upon as a Jew.”
“That is really the _comble_ to the insults we have put upon that unfortunate people.”
“Guy! I will _not_ have you speaking like that in my house,” said the Doña very sternly.
“I beg your pardon,” he muttered, in some confusion; and then took up his shrill monologue: “As a matter of fact, Don Juan is the greatest glory of Spain; he is own brother to Sancho Panza—a superb pair; they are the true αὐτόχθων, made of the mud of _this_ planet, and they understand life as it is meant to be lived down here. The rest of us shriek, like Coleridge, for a ‘bread not made of wheat’.... Yes, we behave idiotically, like creatures in some fable that has not yet been written, when we want cheese for supper, we take our bow and arrows and go and shoot at the moon—the moon, which is the cradle of the English race....” On and on went his voice, the others sitting round in silence, to conceal their embarrassment or boredom.
“To return to Don Juan, I see there is a new theory that he is an _Eniautos Daimon_—one of those year-spirits that die every winter and vegetation dies with them, and are born again in spring with the crops and things ... seeds, and crops and souls dying and springing up again with Don Juan. So there is hope for us all, _sic itur ad astra_—rakes during our life, manure afterwards; so horticultural! I wonder if our friend Mr. Munroe would make a good year-spirit?”