His Duty Was NOT To Take The Man Up.
He Was Evidently An Irregular Customer - Someone Trying To Escape,
Possibly.
The lieutenant turned away, but did not make any further hints.
The captain was right; but we all felt
Somehow disappointed, and
looked back wistfully at the little boat, jumping up and down far
astern now; the poor little light shining in vain, and the poor
wretch within screaming out in the most heartrending accents a last
faint desperate "I say! Pasagero-o!"
We all went down to tea rather melancholy; but the new milk, in the
place of that abominable whipped egg, revived us again; and so
ended the great events on board the "Lady Mary Wood" steamer, on
the 25th August, 1844.
CHAPTER II: LISBON - CADIZ
A great misfortune which befalls a man who has but a single day to
stay in a town, is that fatal duty which superstition entails upon
him of visiting the chief lions of the city in which he may happen
to be. You must go through the ceremony, however much you may sigh
to avoid it; and however much you know that the lions in one
capital roar very much like the lions in another; that the churches
are more or less large and splendid, the palaces pretty spacious,
all the world over; and that there is scarcely a capital city in
this Europe but has its pompous bronze statue or two of some
periwigged, hook-nosed emperor, in a Roman habit, waving his bronze
baton on his broad-flanked brazen charger. We only saw these state
old lions in Lisbon, whose roar has long since ceased to frighten
one. First we went to the Church of St. Roch, to see a famous
piece of mosaic-work there. It is a famous work of art, and was
bought by I don't know what king for I don't know how much money.
All this information may be perfectly relied on, though the fact
is, we did not see the mosaic-work: the sacristan, who guards it,
was yet in bed; and it was veiled from our eyes in a side-chapel by
great dirty damask curtains, which could not be removed, except
when the sacristan's toilette was done, and at the price of a
dollar. So we were spared this mosaic exhibition; and I think I
always feel relieved when such an event occurs. I feel I have done
my duty in coming to see the enormous animal: if he is not at
home, virtute mea me, &c. - we have done our best, and mortal can do
no more.
In order to reach that church of the forbidden mosaic, we had
sweated up several most steep and dusty streets - hot and dusty,
although it was but nine o'clock in the morning. Thence the guide
conducted us into some little dust-powdered gardens, in which the
people make believe to enjoy the verdure, and whence you look over
a great part of the arid, dreary, stony city. There was no smoke,
as in honest London, only dust - dust over the gaunt houses and the
dismal yellow strips of gardens. Many churches were there, and
tall half-baked-looking public edifices, that had a dry,
uncomfortable, earth-quaky look, to my idea. The ground-floors of
the spacious houses by which we passed seemed the coolest and
pleasantest portions of the mansion. They were cellars or
warehouses, for the most part, in which white-jacketed clerks sat
smoking easy cigars. The streets were plastered with placards of a
bull-fight, to take place the next evening (there was no opera that
season); but it was not a real Spanish tauromachy - only a
theatrical combat, as you could see by the picture in which the
horseman was cantering off at three miles an hour, the bull
tripping after him with tips to his gentle horns. Mules
interminable, and almost all excellently sleek and handsome, were
pacing down every street: here and there, but later in the day,
came clattering along a smart rider on a prancing Spanish horse;
and in the afternoon a few families might be seen in the queerest
old-fashioned little carriages, drawn by their jolly mules and
swinging between, or rather before, enormous wheels.
The churches I saw were of the florid periwig architecture - I mean
of that pompous cauliflower kind of ornament which was the fashion
in Louis the Fifteenth's time, at which unlucky period a building
mania seems to have seized upon many of the monarchs of Europe, and
innumerable public edifices were erected. It seems to me to have
been the period in all history when society was the least natural,
and perhaps the most dissolute; and I have always fancied that the
bloated artificial forms of the architecture partake of the social
disorganisation of the time. Who can respect a simpering ninny,
grinning in a Roman dress and a full-bottomed wig, who is made to
pass off for a hero? or a fat woman in a hoop, and of a most
doubtful virtue, who leers at you as a goddess? In the palaces
which we saw, several Court allegories were represented, which,
atrocious as they were in point of art, might yet serve to attract
the regard of the moraliser. There were Faith, Hope, and Charity
restoring Don John to the arms of his happy Portugal: there were
Virtue, Valour, and Victory saluting Don Emanuel: Reading,
Writing, and Arithmetic (for what I know, or some mythologic
nymphs) dancing before Don Miguel - the picture is there still, at
the Ajuda; and ah me! where is poor Mig? Well, it is these State
lies and ceremonies that we persist in going to see; whereas a man
would have a much better insight into Portuguese manners, by
planting himself at a corner, like yonder beggar, and watching the
real transactions of the day.
A drive to Belem is the regular route practised by the traveller
who has to make only a short stay, and accordingly a couple of
carriages were provided for our party, and we were driven through
the long merry street of Belem, peopled by endless strings of
mules, - by thousands of gallegos, with water-barrels on their
shoulders, or lounging by the fountains to hire, - by the Lisbon and
Belem omnibuses, with four mules, jingling along at a good pace;
and it seemed to me to present a far more lively and cheerful,
though not so regular, an appearance as the stately quarters of the
city we had left behind us.
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