So we booked to Figueras.
The Italian accompanied us and revealed his history. He was wandering about, looking for work. He had crossed the frontier on foot from France. His papers were in a queer condition, and some of them he had had to leave in the custody of the frontier officials as a guarantee. But there was no work in Barcelona, so he was going back once more. The bourgeois was an employé of the Italian Consulate, who had come to the station to pay his fare and to see that he really left the town.
The train rolled along through that rich Catalan scenery depicted in the landscapes of José Pujo, and at about ten o'clock we reached Figueras. With some difficulty we found a boy and a hand-cart, by means of which we could transport our luggage to the diligence office. The road was uphill and deep in a clayey mud. The poor boy tugged and pushed, and Jan had to go into the slime to help him. Through a long, narrow, old-fashioned street, Figueras opened out into a plaza planted with tall lime trees, the fallen leaves of which made a sodden carpet on the ground. The dead leaves seemed to give the dominant note of Figueras, a note of exhausted melancholy.
Misfortune, as has so often been said, is sometimes good luck in disguise. More "get on or get out" passengers had forestalled us with the car, notably a fussy man who, dragging with him two or three musical instrument cases, was loudly informing everybody that he had a concert engagement somewhere in France and that his career would be blasted if he did not fulfil it. There was no seat left for us. We turned to the boy and asked him to find us some sleeping place for the night.
"There is the Grand Hotel," he said.
"Do not talk to us of grand hotels," we answered. "Grand hotels are institutions which level humanity to a dead datum of boredom and mulct it of expensive fees in the process."
"Claro," responded the boy.
"Take us to some local pub," we continued, "where the stranger rarely intrudes."
The boy, forcing his cart uphill, led us down a side street to a small wine-shop, the woodwork of whose windows had recently been painted a gay violet hue. We pushed our way inside. A man with beady eyes, who might well be called "black-complexioned," curtly demanded our business. On our request for a bed he scanned us from head to foot. We were indeed somewhat respectable, having travelled in our best clothes for fear of another accident to our luggage, wishing, if such occurred, to save the best we had. The dark man turned to a woman who had a kind of hard, crystalline beauty, and consulted with her. At last the woman said in a coarse voice:
"They can have a room if they will take their meals here."