in different countries. There was one of a boarding-house in Weymouth Street, Portland Place, London, with a picture of the same. Now we do not wish to set up as art-critics, but merely state that we have once or twice in the course of our lives had occasion to find ourselves in that salubrious district, but don't remember noticing any detached house or Italian villa in a park, with palm trees waving over it, and a plantain in full growth. There was another picture of a hotel in Granada, with the Moors walking about the streets and conversing with the waiters at the door, as if Abderrhaman was still residing in Spain.
In the courtyard of our inn a fountain was playing, and a vine formed a large shady arbour for smokers and idlers beneath. There was not much to complain of, and notwithstanding the general smell of garlic, and an odour resembling that of steamboat cabins, with which the bedrooms were perfumed, we slept most comfortably for a short time with calm consciences and clean sheets, gratefully manufacturing a proverb for the occasion, to the effect that fine feathers make fine beds, to say nothing of good housemaids. We even glided into dreams, in which we held conversations with individuals of every possible complexion, dressed in scarlet Scotch bonnets, velveteen jackets, broken out into a nettle-rash of metal buttons, red sashes, breeches, and hose, in Basque, Spanish, French, English, and all sorts of patois, all at once, and with incredible ease, coherence, and velocity. We say we slept most comfortably for a short time, and one must have been very deaf, or stolid, or philosophical—in a word, insensible to all sorts of disturbance—to have slept comfortably after 2 a.m. in such a place. For diligence after diligence coming from somewhere or other, and going in the same direction, rolled by every quarter of an hour immediately underneath our windows, accompanied with loud shouts, cracking of whips, and jangling of bells.
Between the quarters of the hours a gentleman and his wife enlightened the entire hotel with a domestic wrangle in one of the rooms in our neighbourhood, and at 5 a.m. some person or persons overhead, probably experimentalising with a cold tub for the first time in their lives, apparently found it impossible to restrain themselves from giving vent to the natural exhilaration produced by the bath in what seemed, by the trampling they made, to be an Indian war-dance. Added to this, there was a clock in our apartment which struck six when it should have struck four, and eight when it should have struck six, thereby becoming a source of much anxiety to the half-dormant mind, torturing it with vague speculations when it should have been at rest.
The bedroom bell was ingenious enough, going off like an alarum when a knob of wood fixed in the wall was touched; and the invention would be still more valuable if it would at the same time induce any servants to answer it. As it was, the only chance, after prodding it for a good quarter of an hour without any other result than a sore thumb and a great deal of noise, was to seat oneself in an arm-chair before it with the latest newspaper, or some interesting book, and, the elbow firmly pressed against the knob, so to remain, if needs be, for the whole afternoon until some one below was sick of the rattle, and condescended to come and inquire the cause of the summons.
A table-d'hôte breakfast in places like Bayonne is very trying to a delicate stomach, especially when an opposite lady is in the habit of wearing a false nose, and when the gentlemen wear diamond rings and very dirty wristbands. Individuals of excited imaginations may possibly regale themselves with potage à paté d'Italie, but to minds of ordinary level it appears but as some mystic and not very inviting fluid with things like boiled gentles in it. Rognons sautés en champagne is a dish also considered by the sanguine as something quite unique, whereas a philosopher (at all events at so early a meal as breakfast) is apt to connect that condiment in a general way with old hats and hot water.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] What is more miserable than to see an old man just entering on the practice of virtue?
CHAPTER III.
THE CITADEL.—BIARRITZ.—HOW THE VISITORS KILL TIME.—EN ROUTE FOR SPAIN.—ST. JEAN DE LUZ.—HENDAYE.—THE BIDASSOA CROSSED.—WINTER IN SPAIN.—IRUN.—CUSTOM-HOUSE OFFICIALS.—ST. SEBASTIAN.—THE ALAMEDA PROMENADE.—THE PLAIN OF VITTORIA.
WHEN after breakfast we looked out of our window, we perceived on the opposite side of the way a grim old castle, with little grated windows sunk deep into its walls, like the eyes in a consumptive face. And well, indeed, should that old building hide its eyes from all creation, for did not its walls give shelter to the guilty trio who planned within them the devilish scheme of the massacre of St. Bartholomew—the Duke of Alva, Catherine de' Medici, and her miserable offspring, Charles IX.?
A walk about Bayonne brings to notice of course a great amount of fortification, especially the citadel of Vauban, where Marshal Soult and the Duke of Wellington fought very hard and sacrificed a great number of the soldiers of their respective countries. Proceeding in another direction outside the town, the tourist will come to a cemetery where lie forgotten, mouldering in the dust of a foreign land, the remains of the officers of the British guards who fell during the fruitless siege of Bayonne. Down in a dim dell, amongst old trees whispering a requiem in the breeze of falling night, we stood over those solitary graves, near which there was no sign of life, and where the brambles of the wilderness did their utmost to impede the tributary footsteps of the two English pilgrims to this forgotten shrine of their brave countrymen, on which the last beams of sunset threw what seemed in imagination a bloody light.
On a fine southern morning, we climbed on to the top of a crazy diligence, swinging in a very top-heavy and uncomfortable manner over some very high wheels. The vehicle swayed to and fro in such a way that the last carriage of an express train on the narrow gauge would appear immovable compared with it. The banquette, with its hood, in which we were travelling for pleasure, seemed quite overburdened with politeness, and bowed in the most humble manner to everybody and everything it met. We were now on our way to Biarritz, a place we reached after an hour's drive in which there is nothing very remarkable to attract the traveller's attention.
Biarritz is a town situated on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, and consists chiefly of hotels and boarding-houses built on rocks. It is peopled generally by emperors, waiters, hawkers of spurious Spanish goods, and very idle ladies and gentlemen. Creatures like mermaids, with their extremities encased in mackintosh, are seen nearly all day long sporting about in the waters which break upon the yellow sand, and dancing quadrilles in the sea with very odd-looking fish of the male gender, also swathed in curious garments, which cause them at a little distance to resemble very badly rolled-up umbrellas, or an imperfect class of sausages. Barring the bathing, the amusements of Biarritz, or Biarits, as some of the natives write it, are very dear and rather silly. People revolve nightly on their own axes to the solemn strains of a horn band in a large casino, with expressions of countenance as serious and business-like as if they were undergoing a course of rotatory exercise recommended by their medical advisers as a stimulant after the chills of the bath; while the day is consumed, one hardly knows how, except it be in flirting, aquatics, scandal, abuse of one's neighbours, or in buying from gaudy coffee-coloured Spaniards trumpery which, under no conceivable circumstances, could the most ingenious mind ever turn to any account. There is certainly grand food for the eye whichever way it may turn, "whene'er we take our walks abroad," for the long jagged line of the Spanish mountains is seen, now clear, dark, and sharp, now wild and storm-wrapped, rising loftily from the far blue main; and there is always playing on one's cheek, or with the flowing tress of many a pretty damsel, the