It seems rather farcical to make a parade of military secrecy about a structure that has been famous for eighteen centuries; but there is a sentry assigned to it to make sure of preserving its privacy, and I think I acted kindly towards him in providing one culprit for the year. Our re-arrival in the town to interview the Teniente created quite a little sensation, particularly as that official was not to be found at his office, and had to be hunted through the parish by packs of importunate boys. The Teniente was eventually run to earth in his bedroom, in a state of great deshabille, but as polite as if he had been attired in full court uniform. His house and his goods were at my service, and himself only too anxious to do anything in the world{234} to oblige me; but I must not sketch within twenty-five miles of the frontier without a special permit from the Minister of War at Madrid! The travelling Englishman (when not admittedly mad) is always an object of suspicion. But it must be confessed that his vagaries are generally humoured in Spain. He only gets gently restrained in remote and inaccessible places, where the official (never having seen a stranger before) naturally feels it incumbent upon him to do something, but it is not quite certain what. I made no attempt to protest. It would, of course, have been entirely useless; and my Spanish had been already heavily strained in compliments. Moreover, in this instance the genius loci had benignantly decreed that I should have got the horse before they locked the stable door.
Meanwhile I had been left some consolation. The bridge is not quite the only lion at Alcántara, and the grand Benedictine convent of its old military monks rises most imposingly upon the edge of the impending moors. It is now ruinous and dismantled, its fine church perfect but empty, and its cloisters used as a cart-shed by the thrifty usurpers of its halls. Beyond this feature, however, the town has little attraction. It was mercilessly{235} sacked in the spring of 1809 by General Lapisse,—killed three months later while striving to rally his division during the great assault at Talavera,—and since that crushing disaster it has never had spirit to raise its head. There comes a stage when ruin ceases to be picturesque and becomes only depressing. It is rather in this connection that I remember Alcántara and Sahagun.[41]
It is not altogether surprising, in such an inconsequent country, to discover that by crossing Alcántara you will arrive—Nowhere! and that the only traffic across that stupendous edifice is limited to a few flocks of sheep and some casual mules. I had hoped to return to Plaséncia by way of Cória. It is no great distance. Alcántara is in Cória diocese, and there are no special obstacles beyond the river; but there is no vestige of a road. No, I must return from Alcántara to Cáceres, and from Cáceres to Plaséncia, and from Plaséncia I might find a road to Cória—perhaps. Which is the reason why Cória is now bracketted with Trujillo and Guadalupe as one of the places I hope to see some day. I returned, therefore, to Plaséncia the same way that I had come; and passing round the end of the Sierra de Grédos, took{236} my farewell of these “extrema Durii”[42] from the summit of the Pass of Béjar.
I have since learned that “nothing but a lively historical curiosity, and a keen sympathy with the lonely melancholy of the heaths, could have enabled me to endure with equanimity the privations to which I was exposed.”
It is astonishing how little I realised my fortitude at the time.{237}
CHAPTER XII
SEGÓVIA
FEW streams are so mercilessly bantered as the hapless Manzanares, and it is rough on an honest little river to rag it because it is poor. It is “navigable at all seasons for a coach and six”; it is mockingly urged “to sell its bridges for water”; and it labours under a gross imputation (not to be whispered in the presence of touchy Madrilenos), that upon one occasion when it happened to be sufficiently copious to float a mule’s pack-saddle, the enthusiastic citizens turned out to capture the “whale.” Even its few partisans show a calculated gaucherie in their compliments. “Duke of streams and viscount of rivers” is quite a preposterous flight. But perhaps the bitterest tribute is the gibe of a jealous young sportsman (a Toledan, and consequently part-proprietor of the Tagus) who had fainted from heat at a bull-fight, and to whom his neighbours were kindly proffering a pitcher of{238} water:—“Pour it into the Manzanares,” gasped the Spanish Sidney, “it needs it more than I.”
No one would have had an ill word to say of it had it clung to its lowlier destiny. It reaps the reward of the tuft-hunting which sent it to visit Madrid. A mile above the Iron Gate it is as pretty and secluded a little brooklet as anyone need desire;—a clean shingly bed, and broken banks fringed with brushwood and poplars, beneath whose shade we very contentedly dozed through the hot hours of siesta-time, cooling our toes in the water and restfully contemplating the distant summits of the Sierra de Guadarrama,—faint opalescent outlines above the tree-tops in the glen. We had ridden in that morning from Toledo; and to push on across the mountains the same afternoon was too heavy a task to be seriously contemplated. No; we would take matters easily during the heat, and drift on in the evening towards the foot of the pass. We should find lodging—of a sort—at some little village posada, and could tackle the long ascent in the cool of the early dawn.