e, would hesitate to steal money, especially if
liable to detection, but not to take wine and sugar and oil: which is
proved by the freedom with which they discuss the theft among themselves
and the calmness with which they acknowledge it when a wrathful master
takes them in the act. The reasoning is, if you're such a fool as not to
keep your things under lock and key you deserve to be robbed; and if
dismissed for such a peccadillo they consider themselves very hardly
used.

Uncharitable persons, saying that a Spaniard will live for a week on
bread and water duly to prepare himself for a meal at another's expense,
accuse them of gluttony; but I have always found the Andalusians
abstemious eaters, nor have I wondered at this, since Spanish food is
abominable. But drunkards they often are. I should think as many people
in proportion get drunk in Seville as in London, though it is only fair
to add that their heads are not strong, and very little alcohol will
produce in them an indecent exhilaration.

But if the reader, because the Andalusians are slothful, truthless, but
moderately honest, vain, concludes that they are an unattractive people
he will grossly err. His reasoning, that moral qualities make pleasant
companions, is quite false; on the contrary it is rigid principles and
unbending character, strength of will and a decided sense of right and
wrong, which make intercourse difficult. A sensitive conscience is no
addition to the amenities of the dinner-table. But when a man is willing
to counter a deadly sin with a shrug of the shoulders, when between
white and black he can discover no insupportable contrast, the
probabilities are that he will at least humour your whims and respect
your prejudices. And so it is that the Andalusians make very agreeable
acquaintance. They are free and amiable in their conversation, and will
always say the thing that pleases rather than the brutal thing that is.
They miss no opportunity to make compliments, which they do so well that
at the moment you are assured these flattering remarks come from the
bottom of their hearts. Very reasonably, they cannot understand why you
should be disagreeable to a man merely because you rob him; to injury,
unless their minds are clouded by passion, they have not the bad taste
to add insult. Compare with these manners the British abhorrence of
polite and complimentary speeches, especially if they happen to be true:
the Englishman may hold you in the h