A Spaniard, however, takes his risks more lightly than an Englishman. Like Sancho Panza, he argues that the physician is worse than the disease. Life is a shockingly hazardous business even on wafers and membrillo, and perhaps, after all, roast partridge is not quite so deadly as Hippocrates supposed.
Perhaps the most notable of the many monasteries and churches of Ávila is the Convent of San Tomas at the foot of the hill to the south. As in many important Spanish churches, the choir is placed in a great stone gallery at the west end, and in this instance the arrangement is balanced by a similar gallery for the High Altar at the east. The floor is occupied by the beautiful marble monument of Prince Juan, the only son of Ferdinand and Isabella. The Catholic kings, fortunate in all else, desired in vain that greatest blessing of all, the happiness of their children. Juan, the hope of their kingdom, died a few months after his marriage, and his posthumous child was still-born. Isabella, their eldest daughter, torn from the cloister to give an heir to the crown, was married to the Crown Prince of Portugal. Her{182} young husband was killed by a fall from his horse; and though she was again married to his successor, she died in child-birth; and her infant son, heir to the whole Peninsula, did not long survive. Poor mad Juana, crazed by the neglect of her worthless husband, was the second daughter of the ill-starred family, and the youngest was Catherine of Aragon.
Ávila lies at an extremely lofty elevation, three thousand feet above sea level; and both here and at Segóvia snow frequently falls as late as the middle of May. The mountains immediately behind it, however, are but the connecting link between the Sierras of Grédos and Guadarrama, and all the loftier peaks lie at some distance east and west. A road leads through the gap to Talavera de la Reyna (a circumstance, it may be remembered, which was extremely fortunate for Sir John Moore).[27] But we, being bound for Madrid, set our course along the north of the mountains, heading eastward to join the main road from Vigo at the little town of Villacastin.
Our course lay over a brown and undulating moorland, with the Duero plains to the left of us and the broken ridges of the Sierra rising up{183} boldly upon the right. The scene might well be matched in Scotland, Donegal, or Connemara; for the granite mountains are very similar in formation, and the purple hardhead which clothes them is an excellent imitation of heather, though of a deeper shade, suggestive of royal mourning. Here and there great tracts of the moorland, many acres in extent, are thickly strewn with gigantic boulders, singly or in heaps, like huge natural cairns. Doubtless these are blocs perchés, the relics of extinct glaciers, like the similar blocks on the road from Salamanca, or those near Ribadávia above the Miño vale. The road, as usual, was almost deserted, but conscientiously patrolled by two very large and splendid carabineros mounted on humble asses, which could scarcely raise their riders off the ground.
At Villacastin we struck the great royal road for which we had been making, and the mountains stretched out their arms to receive us as we turned our faces towards the south. The day had been well advanced when we quitted Ávila, and now it was nearly dusk. The mountains were of indigo darkness, and the deep, closed valley into which we were plunging was as black as the throat of a wolf. But the white road led us on surely and{184} steadily; and we knew that somewhere in the chasm before us was the shelter upon which we were counting for the night.
The Fonda San Rafael is a long, low, straggling building, very similar to our own old coaching inns, but much more primitive in style. The village aristocracy were engaged at dominoes in the kitchen; and the time which we wasted in dining they attempted to utilise more profitably by mastering the English tongue. They borrowed our pocket dictionary and started their task with enthusiasm. But this laudable access of energy did not win the success it deserved. Unluckily they commenced operations among the sn’s—a combination which no Spaniard can ever pronounce without an antecedent e. And they came such amazing croppers over “es-na-îl,” “es-nâ-ké” and “es-ne-êzé,” that their bewildered interpreters got as much at sea as themselves.