When my wonder had somewhat subsided there came upon me an all but uncontrollable desire to shout with laughter. The ludicrousness, the ridiculousness of it all! A vast concourse of humanity driven helter-skelter like as many cattle, scores of persons jostled and bruised, thirteen hundred of the most able-bodied men in Spain to sit motionless on horseback around a theater late into the night, all for the mere protection of one slight youth whose equal was easily to be found in every town or village of the land! Truly this institution of kingship is as humorous a hoax as has been played upon mankind since man was.
A hoax on all concerned. For the incumbent himself, the slender youth inside, who must spend his brief span of years amid such mummery, commands of himself a bit of mild admiration. I fell to wondering what he would give for the right to wander freely and unnoticed all a summer's day along the open highway. Let him who can imagine himself born a king, discovering as early as such notions can penetrate to his infant intellect that his fellow-mortals have placed him high on a pedestal, have given him even without the asking power, riches, and almost reverence as a superior being, when at heart he knows full well he is of quite the same clay as they; and he may well ask himself whether he would have grown up even as manly as the youth who goes by the name of Alfonso XIII. Recalling that former kings of Spain could not be touched by other than a royal finger, we may surely grant common sense to this sovereign who dances uncondescendingly with daughters of the middle class, who chats freely with bullfighters, peasants, or apple-women. Pleasing, too, is his devil-may-carelessness. On this same night, for instance, after reboarding his yacht, he took it suddenly into his mad young head to return at once through this, his most hostile province, to his queen. At one in the morning he was rowed ashore with one companion, stepped into his automobile, himself playing chauffeur, and tore away through Bilbáo and a hundred miles along the craggy coast to San Sebastian. It is not hard to guess what might have happened had he punctured a tire among those stony mountains and been chanced upon by a homing band of peasants brave with wine.
Musing all which I turned to address the cobbler and found him gone. The crowd was slowly melting away. I sat down in the Paseo and waited an hour, but my erstwhile companion did not reappear. When I descended from my lodging next morning there remained not a trace of his "shop" at the foot of the stairs. Had the village miñón done me the honor of telegraphing my description to the seaport, or was my road-worn garb the livery of suspicion? This only I know; when, that Sunday evening after my return from a glimpse of the open sea, I asked my hostess whether her fellow renter were really a shoemaker, she screwed up her parchment-like features into a smile and answered:
"Sí, señor, one of the shoemakers of his majesty."
CHAPTER XIV
A DESCENT INTO ARAGON
There was an unwonted excitement in the air when I boarded the train next morning for the longest unbroken ride of my Spanish journey. Pernales, the anachronism, the twentieth-century bandit of the environs of Córdoba, had fallen. Aboard the train newspapers were as numerous as on the New York "Elevated" at a similar hour. I bought one and was soon lost like the rest in the adventures of this last defier of the mighty guardia civil.
The story was simple. Two evenings before, about the time I had been yawning over the king's fireworks, Pernales had met a village arriero among the foothills of his retreat, and asked him some question about the road. The rustic gave him the desired information, but guessing with whom he was speaking, had raced away, once he was out of sight, as fast as he could drive his ass before him, to carry his suspicions to the village alcalde. The rest was commonplace. A dozen guardias stalked the unsuspecting bandolero among the hills, and coming upon him toward sunrise, brought his unsanctioned career abruptly to a close.
The Roman walls of Leon