Familiar Spanish Travels | Page 8

in
the newspapers the revolutionary complexion which it was now said
they did not wear. At least, when the King had lately come to fetch the
royal household away nothing whatever happened, and the
"constitutional guarantees," suspended amidst the ministerial anxieties,
were restored during the month, with the ironical applause of the liberal
press, which pretended that there had never been any need of their
suspension.

VI
All pleasures, mixed or unmixed, must end, and the qualified joy of our
drive through San Sebastian came to a close on our return to our hotel
well within the second hour, almost within its first half. When I
proposed paying our driver for the exact time, he drooped upon his box
and, remembering my remorse in former years for standing upon my
just rights in such matters, I increased the fare, peseta by peseta, till his
sinking spirits rose, and he smiled gratefully upon me and touched his
brave red cap as he drove away. He had earned his money, if racking
his invention for objects of interest in San Sebastian was a merit. At the
end we were satisfied that it was a well-built town with regular blocks
in the modern quarter, and not without the charm of picturesqueness
which comes of narrow and crooked lanes in the older parts. Prescient
of the incalculable riches before us, we did not ask much of it, and we
got all we asked. I should be grateful to San Sebastian, if for nothing
else than the two very Spanish experiences I had there. One concerned
a letter for me which had been refused by the bankers named in my
letter of credit, from a want of faith, I suppose, in my coming. When I
did come I was told that I would find it at the post-office. That would

be well enough when I found the post-office, which ought to have been
easy enough, but which presented certain difficulties in the driving rain
of our first afternoon. At last in a fine square I asked a fellow-man in
my best conversational Spanish where the post-office was, and after a
moment's apparent suffering he returned, "Do you speak English?"
"Yes." I said, "and I am so glad you do." "Not at all. I don't speak
anything else. Great pleasure. There is the post-office," and it seemed
that I had hardly escaped collision with it. But this was the beginning,
not the end, of my troubles. When I showed my card to the poste
restante clerk, he went carefully through the letters bearing the initial
of my name and denied that there was any for me. We entered into
reciprocally bewildering explanations, and parted altogether baffled.
Then, at the hotel, I consulted with a capable young office-lady, who
tardily developed a knowledge of English, and we agreed that it would
be well to send the chico to the post-office for it. The _chico,_
corresponding in a Spanish hotel to a piccolo in Germany or a page in
England, or our own now evanescing bell-boy, was to get a peseta for
bringing me the letter. He got the _peseta,_ though he only brought me
word that the axithorities would send the letter to the hotel by the
postman that night. The authorities did not send it that night, and the
next morning I recurred to my bankers. There, on my entreaty for some
one who could meet my Spanish at least half-way in English, a
manager of the bank came out of his office and reassured me
concerning the letter which I had now begun to imagine the most
important I had ever missed. Even while we talked the postman came
in and owned having taken the letter back to the office. He voluntarily
promised to bring it to the bank at one o'clock, when I hastened to meet
him. At that hour every one was out at lunch; I came again at four,
when everybody had returned, but the letter was not delivered; at five,
just before the bank closed, the letter, which had now grown from a
carta to a _cartela,_ was still on its way. I left San Sebastian without it;
and will it be credited that when it was forwarded to me a week later at
Madrid it proved the most fatuous missive imaginable, wholly
concerning the writer's own affairs and none of mine?
I cannot guess yet why it was withheld from me, but since the incident
brought me that experience of Spanish politeness, I cannot grieve for it.

The young banker who left his region of high finance to come out and
condole with me, in apologizing for the original refusal of my letter,
would not be contented with so little. Nothing would satisfy him but
going with me, on my hinted