The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes. Miguel de Cervantes

target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_008104c8-9f3d-591c-8ee4-e15b63b2caf5">↑ The Patio, familiar to all who have visited Seville, as forming the centre of the houses, and which serves in summer as the general sitting-room, so to speak, of the family.

      16 ↑ The Braves of the Hampa were a horde of ruffians principally Andalusians; they formed a society ready to commit every species of wrong and violence.

      17 ↑ The perrillo, or "little dog," was the mark of Julian del Rey, a noted armourer of Toledo, by birth a Morisco.

      18 ↑ Ganchuelo is the diminutive of gancho, a crimp.

      19 ↑ Our readers will perceive that this relates to the atrocity committed by the Infant Don Juan of Castille, who, while in revolt against his brother, Sancho IV., appeared before the city of Tarifa with an army, chiefly composed of Mahometans; finding the infant son of the governor, Don Alonzo Perez de Guzman, at nurse in a neighbouring village, he took the child, and bearing him to the foot of the walls, called on Guzman to surrender the place on pain of seeing his infant slaughtered before his eyes in case of refusal. The only reply vouchsafed by Don Alonzo was the horrible one alluded to in the text. He detached his own dagger from its belt, and threw it to Don Juan, when the sanguinary monster, far from respecting the fidelity of his opponent, seized the weapon, and pierced the babe to the heart as he had threatened to do This anecdote is related, with certain variations, in Conde, "La Dominacion de los Arabes en Espana."—See English Translation, vol. iii.

      20 ↑ The winner.

      21 ↑ A large purse made of cat-skin.

      22 ↑ The arroba holds about thirty-two pints.

      23 ↑ The azumbre is two quarts.

      24 ↑ A favourite wine, grown on the shore of the Manzanares.

      25 ↑ The Virgin Martyr, Santa Lucia, had her eyes burnt out of her head, and is regarded, in the Catholic Church, as particularly powerful in the cure of all diseases of the eyes. She is usually represented as bearing her eyes on a salver, which she holds in her hand.

      26 ↑ The quill-driver.

      27 ↑ Fat-face, puff-cheeks, or any other term describing fulness of face, in the least complimentary manner.

      28 ↑ The clamberer.

      29 ↑ Protector, or more exactly "bully,"—to defend and uphold in acts of fraud and violence.

      30 ↑ Dandy.

      31 ↑ Sor the contraction of Señor.

      32 ↑ "Ocaña" is a city at no great distance from Madrid; and if the lady has placed her tiger there, instead of in Hyrcania, as she doubtless intended, it is of course because her emotions had troubled her memory. The "Tarpeian mariner" is a fine phrase surely, but its meaning is not very clear.

      33 ↑ "At that time," remarks Viardot, "while wounds were still sewed up by the surgeons, the importance or extent of the cut made was estimated by the number of the stitches."

      34 ↑ Secutor for executor.

      35 ↑ The goldfinch.

      36 ↑ The lop-eared, or mutilated; alluding, generally, to losses suffered at the hands of justice.

      37 ↑ Radomagos, phials or bottles of ink, vitriol, and other injurious matters, cast on the face, person, or clothes.

      38 ↑ Most of our readers will remember that the "sanbenito" is the long coat or robe, painted over with flames, which is worn by heretics whom the Inquisition has condemned and given over to the civil power.

      39 ↑ Calomels, for calumnies

      40 ↑ The flat-nose.

      41 ↑ The tilde is the mark placed over the Spanish letter n, as in Señor.

      42 ↑ Tricks of cheatery at cards.

      43 ↑ Cutpurse.

      44 ↑ The wolf-cub.

      45 ↑ For Peruvians, which the American merchants were then called.