"Oh, really! They say he's very nice: not exactly handsome, but quite charming, for all that."
The good lady, of course, suspected nothing; but when the King handed her his postcards, it goes without saying that she at once read the superscriptions and saw that they were addressed to the Queen Mother at San Sebastian, to the Infanta Doña Paz, to the Infanta Maria Theresa, to the prime minister.
"Why, it's the King himself!" she exclaimed, quite overcome.
Alfonso XIII was already far on his road.
The most amusing adventure, however, was that which he had at Dax. One morning, he took it into his head to motor away to the parched and desolate country of the Landes, which stretch from Bayonne to Bordeaux. After a long and wearing drive, he decided to take the train back from Dax. Accompanied by his friend Señor Quiñones de Leon, he made for the station, where the two young men, tired out and soaked in perspiration, sat down in the refreshment-room.
"Give us some lunch, please," said the King, who was ravenously hungry, to the woman at the bar.
The refreshment-room, unfortunately, was very meagerly supplied. When the two travelling-companions had eaten up the sorry fare represented by a few eggs and sandwiches, which had probably been waiting more than a month for a traveller to arrive and take a fancy to them, the King, whose appetite was far from being satisfied, called the barmaid, a fat and matronly Béarnaise, with an upper lip adorned with a pair of thick moustachios.
"Have you nothing else to give us?" he asked.
"I have a pâté de foie gras, but it's very expensive," said the decent creature, whose perspicacity did not go to the length of seeing a serious customer in this famished and dusty young man.