She, Of Course, Comes Every Summer To San Sebastian, And Presently Our
Driver Took Us To See The Royal Villa By The Shore, Withdrawn, Perhaps
From A Sense Of Its Extreme Plainness, Not To Say Ugliness, Among Its
Trees And Vines Behind Its Gates And Walls.
Our driver excused himself
for not being able to show us through it; he gladly made us free of an
unrestricted view of the royal bathing-pavilion, much more frankly
splendid in its gilding, beside the beach.
Other villas ranked
themselves along the hillside, testifying to the gaiety of the social
life in summers past and summers to come. In the summer just past the
gaiety may have been interrupted by the strikes taking 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.
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