Familiar Spanish Travels | Page 4

Perhaps he was also loath to attempt any inquiry in that
Desperanto of French, English, and Spanish which raged around us; but
the porter to whom we had fallen, while I hesitated at our carriage door
whether I should summon him as Mozo or _Usted,_ was master of that
lingua franca and recovered us from the customs without question on
our part, and understood everything we could not, say. I like to think he
was a Basque, because I like the Basques so much for no reason that I
can think of. Their being always Carlists would certainly be no reason
with me, for I was never a Carlist; and perhaps my liking is only a
prejudice in their favor from the air of thrift and work which pervades
their beautiful province, or is an effect of their language as I first saw it
inscribed on the front of the Credit Lyonnais at Bayonne. It looked so
beautifully regular, so scholarly, so Latin, so sister to both Spanish and
Italian, so richly and musically voweled, and yet remained so
impenetrable to the most daring surmise, that I conceived at once a
profound admiration for the race which could keep such a language to
itself. When I remembered how blond, how red-blond our sinewy
young porter was, I could not well help breveting him of that race, and
honoring him because he could have read those words with the eyes

that were so blue amid the general Spanish blackness of eyes. He
imparted a quiet from his own calm to our nervousness, and if we had
appealed to him on the point I am sure he would have saved us from
the error of breakfasting in the station restaurant at the deceitful _table
d'hote,_ though where else we should have breakfasted I do not know.
I
One train left for San Sebastian while I was still lost in amaze that what
I had taken into my mouth for fried egg should be inwardly fish and
full of bones; but he quelled my anxiety with the assurance, which I
somehow understood, that there would be another train soon. In the
mean time there were most acceptable Spanish families all about,
affably conversing together, and freely admitting to their conversation
the children, who so publicly abound in Spain, and the nurses who do
nothing to prevent their publicity. There were already the typical fat
Spanish mothers and lean fathers, with the slender daughters, who, in
the tradition of Spanish good-breeding, kept their black eyes to
themselves, or only lent them to the spectators in furtive glances. Both
older and younger ladies wore the scanty Egyptian skirt of Occidental
civilization, lurking or perking in deep-drooping or high-raking hats,
though already here and there was the mantilla, which would more and
more prevail as we went southward; older and younger, they were all
painted and powdered to the favor that Spanish women everywhere
corne to.
When the bad breakfast was over, and the waiters were laying the table
for another as bad, our Basque porter came in and led us to the train for
San Sebastian which he had promised us. It was now raining outside,
and we were glad to climb into our apartment without at all seeing what
Irun was or was not like. But we thought well of the place because we
first experienced there the ample ease of a Spanish car. In Spain the
railroad gauge is five feet six inches; and this car of ours was not only
very spacious, but very clean, while the French cars that had brought us
from Bordeaux to Bayonne and from Bayonne to Irun were neither. I
do not say all French cars are dirty, or all Spanish cars are as clean as
they are spacious. The cars of both countries are hard to get into, by

steep narrow footholds worse even than our flights of steps; in fact, the
English cars are the only ones I know which are easy of access. But
these have not the ample racks for hand-bags which the Spanish
companies provide for travelers willing to take advantage of their trust
by transferring much of their heavy stuff to them. Without owning that
we were such travelers, I find this the place to say that, with the
allowance of a hundred and thirty-two pounds free, our excess baggage
in two large steamer-trunks did not cost us three dollars in a month's
travel, with many detours, from Irun in the extreme north to Algeciras
in the extreme south of Spain.

II
But in this sordid detail I am keeping the reader from the scenery. It
had been growing more and more striking ever since we began
climbing into the Pyrenees from Bayonne; but upon the whole it was
not so sublime