My angel, I continued to myself, if you only knew that at this moment I would prefer those two croquets to the bitter apples—as Sir Niccolo Machiavelli would generously say—even those bitter apples from the famous garden of the Hesperides!
"Try a drop of liquor at least," said the old uncle.
I do not know what childish pique against myself or against those good people took possession of me, but it was a feeling which other men experience on similar occasions; however, I replied this time too, "No, thank you; it would be bad for me."
The good old man looked me over from head to foot as if to say that I did not appear like a man to be the worse for a drop of liquor, and the Andalusian smiled, and I blushed for shame.
Night settled down, and the train went on at the pace of Sancho Panza's steed for I knew not how many hours. That night I felt for the first time in my life the pangs of hunger, which I thought I had felt already on the famous day of the twenty-fourth of June, 1866. To relieve these torments I obstinately thought of all the dishes which filled me with repugnance—raw tomatoes, snails in soup, roasted crabs, and snails in salad. Alas! a voice of derision told me, deep down in my vitals, that if I had any of them I should eat them and lick my fingers. Then I began to make imaginary messes of different dishes, as cream and fish, with a dash of wine, with a coat of pepper, and a layer of juniper preserves, to see if I could thus hold my stomach in check. Oh misery! my cowardly stomach did not repel even those. Then I made a final effort and imagined that I was at table in a Parisian hotel at the time of the siege, and that I gently lifted a mouse by the tail out of some pungent sauce, and the mouse, unexpectedly regaining life, bit my thumb and transfixed me with two wicked little eyes, and I, with raised fork, hesitated whether to let it go or to spit it without pity. But, thank Heaven! before I had settled this horrible question, to perform such an act as has never been recorded in the history of any siege, the train stopped and a ray of hope revived my drooping spirits.
We had reached some nameless village, and while I was putting my head out of the window a voice cried, "All out for Granada!" I rushed headlong from the carriage and found myself face to face with a huge bearded fellow, who took my valise, telling me that he was going to put it in the diligence, for from that village to I know not how many miles from imperial Granada there is no railway.
"One moment!" I cried to the unknown man in a supplicating voice: "how long before you start?"
"Two minutes," he replied.
"Is there an inn here?"
"There it is." I flew to the inn, bolted a hard-boiled egg, and rushed back to the diligence, crying, "How much time now?"