As millers sleep sound to the click of their mill, so I, at the end of the two hours’ gabbling, was perfectly well-seasoned, and let him run on with the most resigned composure, writing and reading as unconcernedly as if in a convent of Carthusians.
Thursday, November 29th.
THERE was a continual racket in the house and about the street-door all night. At four o’clock the baggage-carts set forth, with a tremendous jingling of bells. The morning was so soft and vernal, that we drank our chocolate on the veranda, which commands a wild rural view of shrubby fields and scattered pines, terminated by a long range of blue hills, most picturesquely varied in form, if not in colour.
After breakfast I went to the church, which Colmenar pretends is magnificently gilt and ornamented; but which, in fact, can boast no other decoration than a few shabby altars, displaying the images of Nossa Senhora, and the patron saint, in tinselled garments of faded taffeta. I knelt on a mouldy pavement, and felt a chill wind issuing from between the crevices of loose grave-stones, that returned a hollow sound when I rose up and walked over them. A priest, who was saying mass, officiated with uncommon slowness and solemnity. It was hardly light in the recesses of the chapels.
Soon after eight o’clock we left Aldea Gallega, and ploughed through deep furrows of sand at the sober rate of two miles and a half in an hour. On both sides of the heavy road the eye ranges uninterrupted, except by the stems of starveling pines, through a boundless extent of barren country, overgrown with stunted ilex and gum-cistus. The same scenery lasted without any variation full five leagues, to the venta de Pegoens, where I am now writing, in a long dismal room, with plastered walls, a damp brick-floor, and cracked window-shutters. A pack of half-famished dogs are leaping around me, their eyes ready to start out of their sockets and their ribs out of their skin.
After dining upon the provisions we brought with us, of which the yelping generation enjoyed no inconsiderable share, we proceeded through sandy wilds diversified alone by pines. Not a single habitation occurred, till by a glimmering dubious starlight, for it was now half-past seven, we discovered the extensive front of a palace, built in the year 1729, by John the fifth, for the accommodation of the infanta of Spain, who married his son, the late king D. Josè. Here we were to lodge, and I was rather surprised, upon entering a long suite of well-proportioned apartments, to find doors and windows still capable of being shut and opened, large chimneys guiltless of smoking out of their right channel, and painted ceilings without cracks or crevices.
A young priest, neither deficient in manners nor erudition, the keeper of this solitary palace, did his utmost to make our stay in it agreeable. By his attention, we had some chairs and tables placed by a blazing fire, which I worshipped with all the fervour of an ancient Persian. I had need of this consolation, being much disordered by the tiresome dragging of our heavy coach through heaps of sand, and depressed with feverish shiverings.
Friday, November 30th.
IT was a long while last night before I composed myself to sleep, and being called at the first dawn, I rose, if possible, more indisposed than when I lay down; I could scarcely swallow any refreshment, and kept walking disconsolately through the vast range of naked apartments, till the rays of the rising sun entered the windows. The horizon glowed with ruddy clouds. The vast desert levels, discovered from the balconies of the palace, gleamed with dewy verdure. I hastened out to breathe the fresh morning air, impregnated with the perfume of a thousand aromatic shrubs and opening flowers. I could not believe it was the last day of November, but fancied I had slept away the winter, and was just awakened in the month of May.
To enjoy these fragrant breezes in full liberty, I left our carriage to drag along as slowly as the mules pleased, and the muleteers to smoke their cigarros as deliberately as they thought proper; and mounting my horse, rode the best part of the way to Montemor; which is built on the acclivity of a mountain, and surrounded on every side by groves of olives. The whole face of the country is covered by the same vegetation, and, of course, presents no very cheerful appearance.