"I don't want to see them. I know you. What do you want here?"
"To see a friend."
"Who is your friend?"
Barbarossa was not in the least nonplussed. He said he had heard a fellow-countryman, a comrade of his, was in the town.
"You will have to turn back the way you came, and thank your stars you are permitted."
"But I am hungry."
"And the horse wants a feed," interposed the driver, who no doubt had his own object to serve.
"Well, you may stay here for refreshment, but you must get outside our gates before dark."
We drove to the principal inn, where we alighted and ordered dinner. Barbarossa sat down, and I went out to look at the place and search for a barber's shop, for I sorely needed a shave. Irun is a well-constructed town on the shelving slope of a smaller rise between Mounts Jaizquivel and Aya, not far from the coast. It has a population of some 5,000, and in ordinary years does a good trade in tiles and bricks, tanned leather, and smith's work, besides sending wood to Los Pasages for the purposes of the boat-builders. The Bidassoa at its base branches, and thus forms the islet of Faisanes, off which the prosperous fisherman can fill his basket with trout, salmon, and mullet, aye, and lumpish eels, if his predilections so tend.
But I have no intention to describe Irun. Théophile Gautier has done that before me, and I am not sacrilegious. There was another customer in the barber's shop. As I left after the shave he followed, and accosted me on the flagway confidentially.