Don Pedro, who scarcely deigned to converse with the wealthiest people of Lancia, talked familiarly with this servant, and allowed him to contradict him in the rude rough way peculiarly his own.
"Manin, man, be careful not to give these ladies too much trouble," he would say to the majordomo when they entered some shop together.
"All right," returned the rough fellow in a loud voice, "if they want to be at their ease, let them bring a mattress from home and recline upon it."
Don Pedro would then bite his lips to keep from laughing, for such coarse and brutal remarks were just to his taste.
When they repaired to a café, Manin drank quarts of red wine, whilst his master only sipped a glass of muscat. But although he left it almost full, he always asked and paid for a whole bottle.
An apothecary of the place, with whom the count sometimes condescended to have a chat, once evinced some surprise at this extravagance, but he returned with chilly arrogance:
"I pay for a whole bottle because I think it would be unseemly for Don Pedro Quiñones de Leon to ask for a glass like some ink-stained clerk in a government office."
The whole town was impressed with his manners, for when he met any clerics in the streets, he kissed their hands in accordance with the custom of noblemen of bygone centuries. But, like all the rest of his ways, this respect was nothing but a wish to appear different to other people, and to show that he belonged to the old _régime_; because, although he kissed the hand of his own chaplain in public, he treated him like a servant in private, and, in fact, accorded him far less consideration than he did Manin.
But what most astonished the place, and gave rise to no end of remarks and jokes, was what Don Pedro did with a certain religious solemnity soon after his arrival from Madrid. He appeared at church in the white uniform trimmed with twisted cords pertaining to the office of _Maestrante de Ronda_.
Just before the elevation of the Host at the Mass, he advanced with a solemn step to the empty space in the centre of the edifice, unsheathed his sword, and made sharp, firm passes in the air, in the direction of the four cardinal points. The women were frightened, the children ran away, and the majority of the congregation thought he had suddenly gone out of his mind. But those who were better informed, and more intellectual, understood that it was meant to be a symbolical ceremony, and that those thrusts in the air signified Don Pedro's resolution, as a noble member of a military Order, to fight all the enemies of the faith from every quarter of the globe. The one little periodical published at that time in Lancia (now there are eleven--six dailies, and five weeklies) devoted a whole page to a humorous account of this event.