But To Reach This We Had To Pass Through Another Square, Which We Found Full Of Peasants' Ox-Carts And Mule-Teams; And There Our Guide Instantly Jumped Down And Entered Into A Livelier Quarrel With Those Peaceable Men And Women Than I Could Afterward Have Believed Possible In Spain.

I bade him get back to his seat beside the driver, who was abetting him with an occasional guttural and whom I bade turn round and go another way.

I said that I had hired this turnout, and I was master, and I would be obeyed; but it seemed that I was wrong. My proud hirelings never left off their dispute till somehow the ox-carts and mule-teams were jammed together, and a thoroughfare found for us. Then it was explained that those peasants were always blocking that square in that way and that I had, however unwillingly, been discharging the duty of a public-spirited citizen in compelling them to give way. I did not care for that; I prized far more the quiet with which they had taken the whole affair. It was the first exhibition of the national repose of manner which we were to see so often again, south as well as north, and which I find it so beautiful to have seen. In a Europe abounding in volcanic Italians, nervous Germans, and exasperated Frenchmen, it was comforting, it was edifying to see those Castilian peasants so self-respectfully self-possessed in the wrong.

From time to time in the opener spaces we had got into the sun from the chill shadow of the narrow streets, but now it began to be cloudy, and when we re-entered our hotel it was almost as warm indoors as out.

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