It was blissful, I say, to revel in this grand pastoral poem in the full consciousness that the transition to prose would be one of terror; to know that in one of the big, cool, clean rooms a comfortable bed was prepared for me, where I would lose myself in restful unconsciousness, guarded by the saint whose figure could be clearly defined in an old oil-painting on the wall, and which, with two others of a like kind, were relics, doubtless, of a chapel's previous decoration.
'Twas even so, and when I awoke in the morning to find a huge vessel of water from the river standing by a shallow tub hewn from the trunk of a tree, while near at hand were placed all the articles necessary for body and soul-satisfying ablutions, my perfect content knew not how to manifest itself.
Beautiful San Francisco! What happiness to fill the house with twenty chosen friends and there to dream away a month or more of idle joy! Surely after such dolce far niente days life could hold no bitterness for which we had not, in experience, a ready antidote.
Too soon, it seemed, we were forced to leave there, for we had a long, weary day of mountain climbing ahead of us.
"A bad road," Vincent said, and when he warned me thus I knew I could expect the worst.
We departed through the fields again, past the barb-wire boundary line, across the river, and up among the foot-hills, leading to the mountain close at hand. When the topmost crest was reached I stopped for a last look at the Yegnare Valley, at San Francisco lying below, at San Morano farther in the distance, at the mountain looming up in the background, beyond which lies Tegacigalpa, and then I turned with strengthened spirit to the task before me.
To my surprise, at this height we emerged from the woods, to find ourselves on a most extensive plain, very properly called, in the Spanish, La Mesa—the table. Here we encountered the wagon-road leading from the capital to our destination and for a long distance we followed it. After we left La Mesa it was simply horrible, and all my attention became absorbed in self.
By no means is any one to presume that my mule and I had become reconciled by our lengthened companionship. Discomfort amounting to positive agony had taught me to adopt more attitudes, graceful or ungraceful, than all the combined systems of Delsarte and other physical culturists could possibly suggest.
Every muscle in my body had been so frequently called into requisition that to use any one almost drew forth an involuntary scream. In various places the skin had been worn away by constant friction of the clothing or saddle, leaving highly sensitive sores, even my gauntlets reducing my wrists to such a state.
Words cannot express what I suffered. The torture had been of a less acute kind while we were riding over comparatively level roads, but here we were going "up hill and down dale" again, and how I was to bear it I could not see.