Four Months Afoot in Spain

by Harry Alverson Franck

"Ces messieurs, sir," I remarked at last, "are Spaniards and do not understand a word of French."

"You then, tell them to get out at once!" he cried angrily.

"You must pardon me, monsieur," I protested, "if I do not presume to appoint myself interpreter to your cathedral."

We continued our way, strolling down one nave to the altar, sauntering back along the other toward the entrance, the priest still prancing about us. In the doorway the Basques turned to thank him by signs for his kindness and backed away devoutedly crossing themselves.

At the Louvre, however, the smock-wearers were halted at the door by two stocky officials, and we wandered on into the Tuileries Gardens. There the quartet balked. These hardy mountaineers, accustomed to trudge all day on steep hillsides behind their burros, were worn out by a few miles of strolling on city pavements. For an hour they sat doggedly in a bench before I could cajole them a few yards further to the Place de la Concorde to board a Seine steamer and return to the Cucina. I left them there and returned alone to while away the afternoon among my old haunts in the Latin Quarter.

Soon after dark the razorless son of Italy took us once more in tow and, climbing to the imperial of an omnibus, we rolled away through the brilliant boulevards to the gare St. Lazare. Here was assembled an army of emigrants male and female, of all ages and various distances from their last soaping. In due time we were admitted to the platform. A third-class coach marked "Cherbourg" stood near at hand. I stepped upon the running-board to open a door. A station official caught me by the coat-tail with an oath and a violence that would have landed me on the back of my head but for my grip on the door handle. Being untrained to such treatment, I thrust out an alpargata-shod foot mule-fashion behind me. The official went to sit down dejectedly on the further edge of the platform. By and by he came back to shake his fist in my face. I spoke to him in his own tongue and he at once subsided, crying:

"Tiens! I thought you were one of those animals there."

We were finally stuffed into four cars, so close we were obliged to lie all night with our legs in one another's laps. The weather was arctic, and we slept not a wink. Early in the morning we disentangled moody and silent in Cherbourg. Another unshaven agent took charge of my companions' baggage with the rest, promising it should be returned the moment they were aboard ship. I clung skeptically to my bundle. We were herded together in a tavern and served coffee and bread, during the administration of which the agent collected our tickets and any proof that we had ever possessed them, and disappeared. The day was wintry cold. All the morning we marched shivering back and forth between the statue of Napoleon and the edge of the beach, the teeth of the south-born Basques chattering audibly. At noon we jammed our way into the tavern again for soup, beef and poor cider, and were given rendezvous at two at one of the wharves.

By that hour all were gathered. It was after four, however, when a tender tied up alongside. A man stepped forth with an armful of tickets and began croaking strange imitations of the names thereon. I heard at last a noise that sounded not altogether unlike my own name and, no one else chancing to forestall me, marched on board to reclaim my credentials. A muscular arm thrust me on through a passageway in which a Frenchman in uniform caught me suddenly by the head and turned up my eyelids with a sort of stiletto. Before I could double a fist in protest another arm pushed me on. At six a signal ran up, we steamed out through the breakwater, and were soon tumbling up the gangway of the steamer New York. At the top another doctor lay in wait, but forewarned, I flung open my passport, and flaunting it in his face, stepped unmolested on deck.

Some four hundred third-class passengers had boarded the steamer in England, and no small percentage of the berths were already occupied. Unlike the nests of the Prinzessin, however, they might reasonably be called berths, for though they offered no luxury, or indeed privacy, being two hundred in a section, the quarters were ventilated, well-lighted, and to a certain extent clean. I stepped to the nearest unoccupied bunk and was about to toss my bundle into it when a young steward in shirt-sleeves and apron sprang at me.