The Argosy — page 227: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

210 Letters from Majorca. in common. They are most of them Spaniards, excitable, easily roused, impetuous. In their calm moments, you would think them about to murder each other, and you look for the flash of steel, and the smoke of fire; and you think of the horrible fate of the Kilkenny cats; but when roused and heated and angry—oh then, le déluge: and the colour would surely be crimson? It has never yet reached this climax; but our stay here is only beginning—who knows what may happen before the end? A general fray, perhaps; a vendetta; in which innocent and guilty will alike suffer, and your correspondent will all at once cease to torment you : and there will come a sudden pause, a blank, a great calm, both to you and to us. Up to the present hour we have experienced only the amiable stage. There has been no flash of steel, no smoke of fire, no red deluge. The inferno begins when dinner has well advanced, and the excellent wine, gratuitously supplied in large white glass decanters, has been freely consumed. By this time you would say war to knife was going on. The noise is uproarious, deafening, confusing, bewildering. They all appear to be contradicting each other, but though I under- stand little of what is said, I believe it is only ordinary conversa- tion. Yet every now and then, one flashes up unmistakeably, leans forward, shouts at his adversary, glares, seems on the very point of proceeding to extremities. Then a gradual subsidence, and blood- shed is once more averted. One man continually uses and spreads out his hands, as if he were laying down the law or preaching a sermon. He is quite as emphatic as the others, but not quite so loud; yet, if anything, more irritating. Of their manners in general it is perhaps as well to say nothing. Only those who, like H. C., are blessed with unsusceptible nerves and iron muscles, can stand these things with equanimity. Of course, if an English lady were present, she could zof be present— if you can understand this Irishism. This goes on day after day. We are a small party of four English- men, at our end of the table; for singularly enough two English gentlemen crossed over with us from Barcelona, and our lines have since run very much in the same direction. “Tt never rains, but it pours,” is an old and vulgar saying; and whereas Englishmen very rarely visit this Island of Majorca even in solos, a quartette must needs cross over in the same vessel. To one of them, Majorca is a familiar friend, and it says some- thing for the island that he is again visiting it for an indefinite period. Of course he may have special attractions to bring him here. Ona previous sojourn, the dark flashing eyes of some beautiful houri, or the pensive sapphire orbs, blue as the Mediterranean, of some fair Madonna, may have taken his fancy captive. These influences are irresistible as the fatal basilisk—draw as inevitably as the pole draws the needle. Of this I know nothing, and I have not been COMIEDOOLKS,(E0)