The journey from Malaga to Granada was the most adventurous and
unfortunate that I made in Spain.
In order that my compassionate readers may pity me as much as I
desire, they must know (I am ashamed to occupy people with these
little details) that at Malaga I had eaten only the lightest sort of
an Andalusian repast, of which at the moment of departure I retained
a very vague recollection. But I started, feeling sure that I could
alight at some railway-station where there would be one of those rooms
or public choking-places where one enters at a gallop, eats until one
is out of breath, pays as one scampers out to rush into a crowded
carriage, suffocated and robbed, to curse the schedule, travel, and the
minister of public works who deceives the country. I departed, and for
the first hours it was delightful. The country was all gently sloping
hills and green fields, dotted with villages crowned with palms and
cypresses, and in the carriage, between two old men who rode with their
eyes shut, there was a little Andalusian who kept looking around with
a roguish smile which seemed to say, "Go on; your lovelorn glances
do not offend me." But the train crept along as slowly as a worn-out
diligence, and we stopped only a few moments at the stations. By sunset
my stomach began to cry for help, and, to render the pangs of hunger
even more severe, I was obliged to make a good part of the journey on
foot. The train stopped at an unsafe bridge, and all the passengers got
out and filed around, two by two, to meet the train on the other side
of the river. We were surrounded by the rocks of the Sierra Nevada,
in a wild, desert place, which made it seem as if we were a company
of hostages led by a band of brigands. When we had clambered into the
carriage the train crawled along no faster than before, and my stomach
began to complain more desperately than at first. After a long time we
arrived at a station all crowded with trains, where a large part of the
travellers hurried out before I could reach the step.
"Where are you going?" asked a railroad official, who had seen me
alight.
"To dine," I replied.
"But aren't you going to Granada?"
"Yes."
"Then you won't have time; the train starts immediately."
"But the others have gone."
"You will see them come back on the run in a minute."
The freight-trains in front prevented me from seeing the station; I
thought it was a great way off, and so stayed where I was. Two minutes
passed, five, eight; the tourists did not return and the train did not
start. I jumped out, ran to the station, saw a café, and entered a
large room. Great heavens! Fifty starving people were standing around
a refreshment-table with their noses in their plates, elbows in the
air, and their eyes on the clock, devouring and shouting; another fifty
were crowding around a counter seizing and pocketing bread, fruit, and
candies, while the proprietor and the waiters, panting like horses
and streaming with sweat, ran about, tucked up their sleeves, howled,
tumbled over the seats and upset the customers, and scattered here and
there streams of soup and drops of sauce; and one poor woman, who must
have been the mistress of the café, imprisoned in a little niche behind
the besieged counter, ran her hands through her hair in desperation. At
this sight my arms hung down helplessly. But suddenly I roused myself
and made an onslaught. Driven back by a feminine elbow in my chest, I
rushed in again; repulsed by a jab in the stomach, I gathered all my
strength to make a third attack. At this point the bell rang. There was
a burst of imprecations and then a falling of seats, a scattering of
plates, a hurry-scurry, and a perfect pandemonium. One man, choking
in the fury of his last mouthfuls, became livid and his eyes seemed
bursting from his head as though he were being hanged; another in
stretching out his hand to seize an orange, struck by some one rushing
past, plunged it into a bowl of cream; another was running through the
room in search of his valise with a great smear of sauce on his cheeks;
another, who had tried to drink his wine at one gulp, had strangled
and coughed as if he would tear open his stomach; the officials at the
door cried, "Hurry!" and the travellers called back from the room,
"Ahogate!" (choked), and the waiters ran after those who had not paid,
and those who wanted to pay could not find the waiters; and the ladies
swooned, and the children cried, and everything was upside down.
By good fortune I was able to get into my carriage before the train
started.
But there a new punishment awaited me. The two old men and the little
Andalusian, who must have been the daughter of the one and niece of
the other, had been successful in securing a little booty in the midst
of that accursed crowd at the counter, and they were eating right and
left. I began to watch them with sorrowful eyes like a dog beside his
master's table, counting the mouthfuls and the number of times they
chewed. The little Andalusian noticed it, and, pointing to something
which looked like a croquet, made a gracious bow as if to ask if I
would take it.
"Oh no, thank you," I replied with the smile of a dying man; "I have
eaten."
My angel, I continued to myself, if you only knew that at this moment
I would prefer those two croquets to the bitter apples--as Sir Niccolo
Machiavelli would generously say--even those bitter apples from the
famous garden of the Hesperides!
"Try a drop of liquor at least," said the old uncle.
I do not know what childish pique against myself or against those good
people took possession of me, but it was a feeling which other men
experience on similar occasions; however, I replied this time too, "No,
thank you; it would be bad for me."
The good old man looked me over from head to foot as if to say that I
did not appear like a man to be the worse for a drop of liquor, and the
Andalusian smiled, and I blushed for shame.
Night settled down, and the train went on at the pace of Sancho Panza's
steed for I knew not how many hours. That night I felt for the first
time in my life the pangs of hunger, which I thought I had felt already
on the famous day of the twenty-fourth of June, 1866. To relieve these
torments I obstinately thought of all the dishes which filled me with
repugnance--raw tomatoes, snails in soup, roasted crabs, and snails
in salad. Alas! a voice of derision told me, deep down in my vitals,
that if I had any of them I should eat them and lick my fingers. Then I
began to make imaginary messes of different dishes, as cream and fish,
with a dash of wine, with a coat of pepper, and a layer of juniper
preserves, to see if I could thus hold my stomach in check. Oh misery!
my cowardly stomach did not repel even those. Then I made a final
effort and imagined that I was at table in a Parisian hotel at the time
of the siege, and that I gently lifted a mouse by the tail out of some
pungent sauce, and the mouse, unexpectedly regaining life, bit my thumb
and transfixed me with two wicked little eyes, and I, with raised fork,
hesitated whether to let it go or to spit it without pity. But, thank
Heaven! before I had settled this horrible question, to perform such an
act as has never been recorded in the history of any siege, the train
stopped and a ray of hope revived my drooping spirits.
We had reached some nameless village, and while I was putting my head
out of the window a voice cried, "All out for Granada!" I rushed
headlong from the carriage and found myself face to face with a huge
bearded fellow, who took my valise, telling me that he was going to put
it in the diligence, for from that village to I know not how many miles
from _imperial Granada_ there is no railway.
"One moment!" I cried to the unknown man in a supplicating voice: "how
long before you start?"
"Two minutes," he replied.
"Is there an inn here?"
"There it is." I flew to the inn, bolted a hard-boiled egg, and rushed
back to the diligence, crying, "How much time now?"
"Two minutes more," answered the same voice.
I flew back to the hotel, seized another egg, and ran again to the
diligence with the question, "Are you off?"
"In a minute."
Back again to the inn, and a third egg, and then to the diligence: "Are
we going?"
"In half a minute."
This time I heaved a mighty sigh, ran to the inn, swallowed a fourth
egg and a glass of wine, and rushed toward the diligence. But before
I had taken ten steps my breath gave out, and I stopped with the egg
halfway down my throat. At this point the whip cracked.--"Wait!" I
cried in a hoarse voice, waving my hands like a drowning man.
"_Que hay?_" (What's the matter?) demanded the driver.