“You must know that this old Royalist was as crazy as a man can be.  His political misfortunes, his total downfall and ruin, had disordered his mind.  To show his contempt for what we patriots could do, he affected to laugh at his imprisonment, at the confiscation of his lands, the burning of his houses, and at the misery to which he and his womenfolk were reduced.  This habit of laughing had grown upon him, so that he would begin to laugh and shout directly he caught sight of any stranger.  That was the form of his madness.

“I, of course, disregarded the noise of that madman with that feeling of superiority the success of our cause inspired in us Americans.  I suppose I really despised him because he was an old Castilian, a Spaniard born, and a Royalist.  Those were certainly no reasons to scorn a man; but for centuries Spaniards born had shown their contempt of us Americans, men as well descended as themselves, simply because we were what they called colonists.  We had been kept in abasement and made to feel our inferiority in social intercourse.  And now it was our turn.  It was safe for us patriots to display the same sentiments; and I being a young patriot, son of a patriot, despised that old Spaniard, and despising him I naturally disregarded his abuse, though it was annoying to my feelings.  Others perhaps would not have been so forbearing.

“He would begin with a great yell—­’I see a patriot.  Another of them!’ long before I came abreast of the house.  The tone of his senseless revilings, mingled with bursts of laughter, was sometimes piercingly shrill and sometimes grave.  It was all very mad; but I felt it incumbent upon my dignity to check my horse to a walk without even glancing towards the house, as if that man’s abusive clamour in the porch were less than the barking of a cur.  Always I rode by preserving an expression of haughty indifference on my face.

“It was no doubt very dignified; but I should have done better if I had kept my eyes open.  A military man in war time should never consider himself off duty; and especially so if the war is a revolutionary war, when the enemy is not at the door, but within your very house.  At such times the heat of passionate convictions passing into hatred, removes the restraints of honour and humanity from many men and of delicacy and fear from some women.  These last, when once they throw off the timidity and reserve of their sex, become by the vivacity of their intelligence and the violence of their merciless resentment more dangerous than so many armed giants.”

The General’s voice rose, but his big hand stroked his white beard twice with an effect of venerable calmness.  “Si, Senores!  Women are ready to rise to the heights of devotion unattainable by us men, or to sink into the depths of abasement which amazes our masculine prejudices.  I am speaking now of exceptional women, you understand. . . .”

Here one of the guests observed that he had never met a woman yet who was not capable of turning out quite exceptional under circumstances that would engage her feelings strongly.  “That sort of superiority in recklessness they have over us,” he concluded, “makes of them the more interesting half of mankind.”