“We Basques do not call this a part of Spain,” Eskurola corrected him in a voice patently striving to be gentle; “and the innkeeper knows little. He is but a poor thing from Navarre.”
“Yes,” Cartaret agreed; “the staple of his talk was the statement that he knew nothing at all.”
Eskurola smiled.
“That is the truth,” said he.
He went on to speak freely enough of his own people. He explained something of their almost Mongolian language: its genderless nouns; its countless diminutives; its endless compounds formed by mere juxtaposition and elision; its staggering array of affixes to supply all ordinary grammatical distinctions, doing away with our need of periphrasis and making the ending of a word determine its number and person and mood, the case and number of the object, and even the rank, sex and number of the persons addressed.
He talked with a modesty so formed as really to show his high pride in everything that was Basque. When Cartaret pressed him, he told, with only a pretense of doubt in his voice, how the Celtiberi considered themselves descendants of the ocean-engulfed Atalantes, and former owners of all the Spanish peninsula. Even now, he insisted, they were the sole power over themselves from the bold coast-line of Vizcaya to the borders of Navarre and had so been long before Sancho the Wise was forced to grant them a fuero. They had always named their own governors and fixed their own taxes by republican methods. The sign of the Vascongadas, the three interlaced hands with the motto Iruracacabat, signified three-in-one, because delegates from their three parliaments met each year to care for the common interests of all; but there was no written pact between them: the Basques were people of honor.
Spain? Don Ricardo disliked its mention. St. Mary of Salvaterra! The Basque parliaments named a deputation that negotiated with representatives of the Escorial and preserved Basque liberties and law. If Madrid called that sovereignty, it was welcome to the term.
“We remain untouched by Spain,” he said, “and untouched by the world. Our legends are still Grecian, our customs are what the English call ‘iron-clad.’ Basque blood is Basque and so remains. It never mixes. It could mix in only one contingency.”
Cartaret was glad that the darkness hid his flushed cheek as he answered:
“I have recently heard of that contingency.”