His Own English Had
Somewhat Fallen By The Way, But What Was Left He Used With Great
Courage; And He Was One Of Those Government Interpreters Whom You Find
At Every Large Station Throughout Spain In The Number Of The Principal
Hotels Of The Place.
They pay the government a certain tax for their
license, though it was our friend's expressed belief that the
Government, on the contrary, paid him a salary of two dollars a day; but
perhaps this was no better founded than his belief in a German princess
who, when he went as her courier, paid him ten dollars a day and all his
expenses. She wished him to come and live near her in Germany, so as to
be ready to go with her to South America, but he had not yet made up his
mind to leave Burgos, though his poor eyes watered with such a cold as
only Burgos can give a man in the early autumn; when I urged him to look
to the bad cough he had, he pleaded that it was a very old cough. He had
a fascination of his own, which probably came from his imaginative habit
of mind, so that I could have wished more adoptive fellow-citizens were
like him. He sympathized strongly with us in our grief with the cold of
the hotel, and when we said that a small oil-heater would take the chill
off a large room, he said that he had advised that very thing, but that
our host had replied, with proud finality, "I am the landlord." Whether
this really happened or not, I cannot say, but I have no doubt that our
little guide had some faith in it as a real incident.
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