“He must be one of the rascally gavachos from Cadiz,” (a French garrison at this time occupied that fortress,) “but what right has he to take his notes of our pueblo?[134] I thought of questioning the servant, who does speak a few words of Spanish, before he took the horses to the smithy, but Don Guillelmo came in and put it out of my head. Suppose I make another attempt to find out from himself what brings him here?"
“Do so,” said her lord and master; and, with this permission, she advanced towards me with a very gracious smile, and articulating every syllable most distinctly, in the hope of making her interrogation perfectly intelligible, “begged to know if my worship was a Frenchman.”
“Yo,” said I, pointing to myself, as if I did not clearly understand her; “nix.”
“Ingles?” demanded she, returning to the charge.
“Si,” replied I, with a nod affirmative.
“Valga mi Dios!” exclaimed she, turning to her husband; “he is English! how delighted I am! what a time it is since I saw an Englishman! how can we make him comfortable?”
“Poco a poco,”[135] observed the inn-keeper—“English or French he has no business to be mapeando our country, and the Alcalde ought to know of it.”
“Disparate!”[136] exclaimed the wife; “what does his mapeando signify if he is an Englishman? are they not our best friends?[137] Is it not the same as if a Spaniard were doing it, only that it will be better done?”
“Very true,” admitted mine host; “they have, indeed, been our friends, and will soon again, I trust, give us a proof of their friendship, by assisting to drive these French scoundrels across the Pyrenees, and allowing us to settle our own differences.”
Pocketing my memorandum book, I now rose from my seat and addressing the landlady, “con gentil donayre y talante,”[138] as Don Quijote says, asked, in the best Castillian I could put together, when it was probable I should have dinner, as from having been the greater part of the morning on horseback, I was not only very hungry, but should be glad to retire early to my bed.