By daybreak on the following morning I was in a railway-carriage on my way from Marseilles to Perpignan, in the midst of a group of ten Zouave officers arrived from Africa the previous day, some with crutches, some with canes, some with bandaged arms; but all as happy and boisterous as so many school-boys. It was a long journey, consequently conversation was necessary. However, from all I had heard of the bitterness with which the French regarded us, I did not venture to open my mouth. But how foolish! One of them spoke the word and the conversation was started: “An Italian?”
“Yes.”
It was as good as a holiday. All but one had fought in Italy; one had been wounded at Magenta. They began to tell anecdotes of Genoa, of Turin, of Milan, to ask a thousand questions, to describe their life in Africa.
One began to discuss the Pope. “Oh!” said I to myself. Why? He talked even stronger than I should have done: he said that we ought to have cut the knot of the question, and to have gone to the root of the matter without considering the peasantry.
Meantime, as we were approaching the Pyrenees, I amused myself by observing the increasing difference in the pronunciation of the passengers who entered the carriage; by remarking how the French language died, so to speak, into the Spanish; by feeling how near Spain was growing until Perpignan was reached; and as I hurried into a diligence I heard the first Buenos dias and Buen viaje, so pure and sonorous that the words gave me infinite pleasure. Nevertheless, they do not speak Spanish at Perpignan, but they use a dialect formed by a mingling of French, Marseillaise, and Catalan, unpleasant to the ear. I alighted from the diligence at the hotel in the midst of a crowd of officers, gentlemen, Englishmen, and trunks. A waiter compelled me to sit down at a table already spread: I ate until I almost strangled, and was hurried into another diligence and away.
Ah me! I had so long cherished the thought of crossing the Pyrenees, and I now was forced to make the journey by night. Before we arrived at the foothills it was dark. Through the long, long hours, between sleeping and waking, I saw only a bit of the road lit up by the lights of the lantern of the diligence, the black outline of some mountain, the projecting rocks, which seemed to be within arms’ reach of the window, and I heard only the regular tramping of the horses and the whistling of an accursed wind which blew without a moment’s intermission.
Beside me sat an American from the United States, a young man, the most original fellow in the world, who slept I know not how many hours with his head on my shoulder. Now and then he roused himself to exclaim in a lamentable voice, “Ah what a night! what a horrible night!” without perceiving that with his head he gave me an additional reason for making the same lament.
At the first stopping-place we both alighted and entered a little hostelry to get a glass of liquor; my fellow-traveller asked me if I was travelling on business. “No, sir,” I replied; “I am travelling for pleasure; and you, if I may ask?”—“I am travelling for love,” he replied with perfect gravity.—“For love!—” And then, unasked, he told me a long story of an unhappy love-affair, of a deferred marriage, of abductions and duels, and I know not what else; and finally he said he was travelling for a change of scene to help him forget the lady of his affections. And, in fact, he sought distraction to the top of his bent, for at every inn where we stopped, from the beginning of our journey until we arrived at Gerona, he did nothing but tease the maids—always with the utmost gravity, it is true, but nevertheless with an audacity which even his desire for distraction failed to justify.
Three hours after midnight we arrived at the frontier. “Estamos en España!” (We are in Spain!) cried a voice. The diligence came to a stop. The American and I leaped again to the ground, and with great curiosity entered a little inn to see the first sons of Spain within the walls of a Spanish house.
We found a half-dozen customs officials, the host, his wife, and children sitting around a brasier. They greeted us at once. I asked a number of questions, and they answered in an open, spirited manner, which I had not expected to find among the Catalans, who are described in the gazetteers as a rude people of few words. I asked if they had anything to eat, and they brought in the famous Spanish chorizo, a sort of sausage, which is overseasoned with pepper and burns the stomach, a bottle of sweet wine, and some hard bread.