but impolite.
While the alcalde if pressed must confess himself an optimist, believing that whatever is, is best, yet in practice that best he would better, and whatsoever his strength permitted, it was right for him to do.
He was a sort of Mephistopheles, decked in manners and guided by knowledge.
- Besides the world, he knew books, and how to make somewhat of them.
- Earnestly devoted to the service of the church, many of his acts yet met with its most unqualified condemnation.
Possessed of vehement aspirations, his ambition was of the aggressive kind; not like that of Velazquez, mercenary and timid.
Like Tigellinus Sophonius, it was to his pleasing person and unscrupulous character that the alcalde owed his rise from poverty and obscurity; and now, like Phaethon, if for one day he might drive the governor’s sun-chariot across the heavens, it would be his own fault if he were not a made man.