I can already be as polite as the most
courteous native, and that is, at least, the beginning of
conversation. I can ask, too, for the necessaries of life, and inquire
my road, should I chance to lose it. Let a woman alone for getting the
tongues. I hold frequent conferences with Antonio Lobo, the peasant
who keeps our orchard at head-quarters, and have daily talks with our
Portuguese chamber-maid, and can find fault with her, not to say
scold, in good set terms. The awkward creature gives me abundant
provocation for scolding, and for not forgetting your advice about
vociferation and gesticulation."
"You do well to remember it," said L'Isle; "it will help you on
famously."
"I had some thoughts," she continued, "in order to lose no opportunity
of familiarizing myself with these tongues, of saying my prayers in
Spanish of a morning, and Portuguese at night. But a scruple of
conscience deterred me from attempting, in prayer, to kill two birds
with one stone."
"I think," said L'Isle, laughing, "that your scruple was not out of
place."
"Yet you know that Charles V. held that God should never be addressed
but in Spanish."
"A strange doctrine for a Papist, who was always praying to him in bad
Latin," said L'Isle.
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