CHAPTER II
The Old-Fashioned Invocation—"Them 'ere Spanish Kings!"—Candidates for a Throne—En Voyage—Bordeaux and the Back-ache—An Unmannerly Alsatian—The Patriot gets a Roland for his Oliver—Small Change for a Hot Bath—Plan for Universal Coinage—Daughters of Israel—The Jews Diagnosed—Across the Border—The Writer is Saluted "Caballero"—Bugaboo Santa Cruz—Over a Brasero.
O MULES, liquorice, onions, oranges, garlic, and eke figs, cork and olives, and all you other products of Spain, come to my aid now that I enter upon my theme! Why should not a prose-chronicler of this era proffer his appeal as did the poets of era undetermined, of the eras of Augustus or the Second Charles? Perchance the Θεα, Musa, or Muse, to whom he makes his plea, may prove less kind than those to whom Homer, Virgil, or Milton prayed; but he has his remedy. In most instances, he can eat them.
Having complied with what used to be a hallowed custom, I shall now, following the example of that shrewd man, the late Abraham Lincoln, proceed to tell a story. The deadly sin in any book is dulness, and an occasional anecdote—if it point a moral so much the better—is sovran balsam for spleen.
I had a literary friend in London, and as he once returned to his residence by Regent's Park after a long walk, and asked had anyone called during his absence, the housekeeper replied "No;" but, correcting herself, added, "leastways, nobody, sir, except one of them 'ere Spanish kings!"
The Spanish king who was of no consequence was one of the race of Pretenders, and had the proud blood of countless generations of thick-lipped Bourbons meandering through his veins.
In the February of 1873, from which my personal knowledge of Spain dates, there were quite a number of these Spanish kings on the carpet. Amadeus, the Italian, had vacated the throne on the 11th, in a message which substantially affirmed that the peaceful government of Spain was hopeless—his Majesty gave it up as a bad job—and the two Chambers, combining as the sovereign Cortes, proclaimed the Republic by a majority of four to one. Of the aspirants to the crown there were notably Don Carlos Maria de los Dolores, the legitimate heir—if there be any virtue in legitimacy—and Don Alfonso, only son of the deposed Isabella, a boy of fifteen, at school at Vienna, a legitimate claimant if the abolition of the Salic law in 1830 be acknowledged. There was one who might have been a king, but sensibly declined the proffered honour, in the person of the ancient Espartero, Duke of Victory, Prince of Vergara; and there was a Prussian princeling, a Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who had been nominated king in the midsummer of 1870, and whose nomination afforded the coveted pretext for the war between France and Germany. Besides, every Captain-General in the country—and the allowance is five—was a king in prospectu, not to mention the multifarious leaders of the many parties in the Congress, all of whom were qualified to be kings in their own conceit. Spain being thus suffering from a plethora of kings—as one result of which the Republic existed—it struck those who had commissioned me to chronicle the humours of besieged Paris that I might find some material for instructive and entertaining writing at the other side of the Pyrenees.
There are several ways of getting to Madrid. I had no difficulty in selecting mine—in fact, I had no choice. It was my duty to go there by the quickest route, no matter what the expense, the danger, or the inconvenience. These were the terms implied in my bond. The first stage was to Bordeaux. Over that I shall not dwell beyond a passing note on the excitement of the mad drive from terminus to terminus through Paris streets, in the early morn, at the rate of four statute miles an hour, in order, as Brother Jonathan has it, to "establish connection," and the misery of the long railway pilgrimage south. The scenery, I believe, was lovely; but fatigue, and the worry of a constrained position, and the frequent jerky stops as one was dozing to sleep, and the impatient summons "en voiture" as the hungry man was settling to a square meal, indisposed one for the proper appreciation of the picturesque. I got so eye-dazed from the whirl and dust and flitting sentinels of telegraph-posts on the long music-lines of telegraph-wires, that I could not distinguish a life-buoy from a funeral wreath. There were no sleeping-cars between Paris and Bordeaux then; back-ache, with an occasional variety in the shape of migraine, is my principal memory of that journey. Back-ache, the reader will allow, would take the poetry out of a honeymoon trip. And here I interpose a short parenthesis to register my acknowledgment to the philanthropist who invented sleeping-cars with their complementary accommodations. He is a benefactor to travelling humanity. Statues have been erected to dozens who have done less good to their kind—soldiers, lawyers, politicians, and patent pill-makers. Sleeping-cars avert exhaustion, ill-humour, bad dreams, and kidney-disease, not to exclude the back-ache and migraine afore-mentioned. Whenever a bronze memorial is to be raised on the Thames Embankment to their inventor, I am ready with my contribution.
At Bordeaux, where I shuffled into the nearest hotel, I uncoiled myself, and took the kinks out of my bones; but of the wine capital I shall say no more than that "I came, I slept, I left." At leaving, a little adventure variegated the itinerary. As I entered the railway-carriage, a gentleman on the opposite seat, its only occupant, was sucking an orange. I pulled out my cigar-case, and politely asked him if he had any objection to my smoking.
"Are you a German?" he demanded stiffly.