_Of our journey through France to a very horrid pass in the Pyraneans._
Skipping over many unimportant particulars of our leaving Edmonton, of
our finding Don Sanchez at the Turk in Gracious Street, of our going
thence (the next day) to Gravesend, of our preparation there for voyage,
I come now to our embarking, the 10th March, in the Rose, for Bordeaux
in France. Nor shall I dwell long on that journey, neither, which was
exceedingly long and painful, by reason of our nearing the equinoctials,
which dashed us from our course to that degree that it was the 26th
before we reached our port and cast anchor in still water. And all those
days we were prostrated with sickness, and especially Jack Dawson,
because of his full habit, so that he declared he would rather ride
a-horseback to the end of the earth than go another mile on sea.
We stayed in Bordeaux, which is a noble town, but dirty, four days to
refresh ourselves, and here the Don lodged us in a fine inn and fed us
on the best; and also he made us buy new clothes and linen (which we
sadly needed after the pickle we had lain in a fortnight) and cast away
our old; but no more than was necessary, saying 'twould be better to
furnish ourselves with fresh linen as we needed it, than carry baggage,
etc. "And let all you buy be good goods," says he, "for in this country
a man is valued at what he seems, and the innkeepers do go in such fear
of their seigneurs that they will charge him less for entertainment than
if he were a mean fellow who could ill afford to pay."
So not to displease him we dressed ourselves in the French fashion, more
richly than ever we had been clad in our lives, and especially Moll did
profit by this occasion to furnish herself like any duchess; so that
Dawson and I drew lots to decide which of us should present the bill to
Don Sanchez, thinking he would certainly take exception to our
extravagance; but he did not so much as raise his eyebrows at the total,
but paid it without ever a glance at the items. Nay, when Moll presents
herself in her new equipment, he makes her a low reverence and pays her
a most handsome compliment, but in his serious humour and without a
smile. He himself wore a new suit all of black, not so fine as ours, but
very noble and becoming, by reason of his easy, graceful manner and his
majestic, high carriage.
On the last day of March we set forth for Toulouse. At our starting Don
Sanchez bade Moll ride by his side, and so we, not being bid, fell
behind; and, feeling awkward in our new clothes, we might very well have
been taken for their servants, or a pair of ill-bred friends at the
best, for our Moll carried herself not a whit less magnificent than the
Don, to the admiration of all who looked at her.
To see these grand airs of hers charmed Jack Dawson.
"You see, Kit," whispers he, "what an apt scholar the minx is, and what
an obedient, dutiful, good girl. One word from me is as good as six
months' schooling, for all this comes of that lecture I gave her the
last night we were at Edmonton."
I would not deny him the satisfaction of this belief, but I felt pretty
sure that had she been riding betwixt us in her old gown, instead of
beside the Don as his daughter, all her father's preaching would not
have stayed her from behaving herself like an orange wench.
We journey by easy stages ten days through Toulouse, on the road to
Perpignan, and being favoured with remarkably fine weather, a blue sky,
and a bright sun above us, and at every turn something strange or
beautiful to admire, no pleasure jaunt in the world could have been more
delightful. At every inn (which here they call hotels) we found good
beds, good food, excellent wine, and were treated like princes, so that
Dawson and I would gladly have given up our promise of a fortune to have
lived in this manner to the end of our days. But Don Sanchez professed
to hold all on this side of the Pyrenese Mountains in great contempt,
saying these hotels were as nothing to the Spanish posadas, that the
people here would rob you if they dared, whereas, on t'other side, not a
Spaniard would take so much as the hair of your horse's tail, though he
were at the last extremity, that the food was not fit for aught but a
Frenchman, and so forth. And our Moll, catching this humour, did also
turn up her nose at everything she was offered, and would send away a
bottle of wine from the table because 'twas not ripe enough, though but
a few weeks before she had been drinking penny ale with a relish, and
that as sour as verjuice. And, indeed, she did carry it mighty high and
artificial, wherever respect and humility were to be commanded. But it
was pretty to see how she would unbend and become her natural self where
her heart was touched by some tender sentiment. How she would empty her
pockets to give to any one with a piteous tale, how she would get from
her horse to pluck wild-flowers by the roadside, and how, one day,
overtaking a poor woman carrying a child painfully on her back, she must
have the little one up on her lap and carry it till we reached the
hamlet where the woman lived, etc. On the fifteenth day we stayed at St.
Denys, and going thence the next morning, had travelled but a couple of
hours when we were caught in a violent storm of hailstones as big as
peas, that was swept with incredible force by a wind rushing through a
deep ravine in the mountains, so that 'twas as much as we could make
headway through it and gain a village which lay but a little distance
from us. And here we were forced to stay all day by another storm of
rain, that followed the hail and continued till nightfall. Many others
besides ourselves were compelled to seek refuge at our inn, and amongst
them a company of Spanish muleteers, for it seems we were come to a pass
leading through the mountains into Spain. These were the first Spaniards
we had yet seen (save the Don), and for all we had heard to their
credit, we could not admire them greatly, being a low-browed,
coarse-featured, ragged crew, and more picturesque than cleanly, besides
stinking intolerably of garlic. By nightfall there was more company than
the inn could accommodate; nevertheless, in respect to our quality, we
were given the best rooms in the house to ourselves.
About eight o'clock, as we were about to sit down to supper, our
innkeeper's wife comes in to tell us that a Spanish grandee is below,
who has been travelling for hours in the storm, and then she asked very
humbly if our excellencies will permit her to lay him a bed in our room
when we have done with it, as she can bestow him nowhere else (the
muleteers filling her house to the very cock loft), and has not the
heart to send him on to St. Denys in this pitiless driving rain. To this
Don Sanchez replies, that a Spanish gentleman is welcome to all we can
offer him, and therewith sends down a mighty civil message, begging his
company at our table.
Moll has just time to whip on a piece of finery, and we to put on our
best manners, when the landlady returns, followed by a stout, robust
Spaniard, in an old coat several times too small for him, whom she
introduced as Señor Don Lopez de Calvados.
Don Lopez makes us a reverence, and then, with his shoulders up to his
ears and like gestures, gives us an harangue at some length, but this
being in Spanish, is as heathen Greek to our ears. However, Don Sanchez
explains that our visitor is excusing his appearance as being forced to
change his wet clothes for what the innkeeper can lend him, and so we,
grinning to express our amiability, all sit down to table and set
to--Moll with her most finicking, delicate airs and graces, and Dawson
and I silent as frogs, with understanding nothing of the Dons'
conversation. This, we learn from Don Sanchez after supper, has turned
chiefly on the best means of crossing into Spain, from which it appears
there are two passes through the mountains, both leading to the same
town, but one more circuitous than the other. Don Lopez has come by the
latter, because the former is used by the muleteers, who are not always
the most pleasant companions one can have in a dangerous road; and for
this reason he recommends us to take his way, especially as we have a
young lady with us, which will be the more practicable, as the same
guides who conducted him will be only too glad to serve us on their
return the next morning. To this proposition we very readily agree, and
supper being ended, Don Sanchez sends for the guides, two hardy
mountaineers, who very readily agree to take us this way the next
morning, if the weather permits. And so we all, wishing Don Lopez a
good-night, to our several chambers.
I was awoke in the middle of the night, as it seemed to me, by a great
commotion below of Spanish shouting and roaring with much jingling of
bells; and looking out of window I perceived lanterns hanging here and
there in the courtyard, and the muleteers packing their goods to depart,
with a fine clear sky full of stars overhead. And scarce had I turned
into my warm bed again, thanking God I was no muleteer, when in comes
the Don with a candle, to say the guide will have us moving at once if
we would reach Ravellos (our Spanish town) before night. So I to
Dawson's chamber, and he to Moll's, and in a little while we all
shivering down to the great kitchen, where is never a muleteer left, but
only a great stench of garlic, to eat a mess of soup, very hot and
comforting. And after that out into the dark (there being as yet but a
faint flush of green and primrose colour over towards the east), where
four fresh mules (which Don Sanchez overnight had bargained to exchange
against our horses, as being the only kind of cattle fit for this
service) are waiting for us with other two mules, belonging to our
guides, all very curiously trapped out with a network of wool and little
jingling bells. Then when Don Sanchez had solemnly debated whether we
should not awake Don Lopez to say farewell, and we had persuaded him
that it would be kinder to let him sleep on, we mounted into our high,
fantastic saddles, and set out towards the mountains, our guides
leading, and we following close upon their heels as our mules could get,
but by no guidance of ours, though we held the reins, for these
creatures are very sagacious and so pertinacious and opiniastre that I
believe though you pulled their heads off they would yet go their own
way.
Our road at first lay across a rising plain, very wild and scrubby, as I
imagine, by the frequent deviations of our beast, and then through a
forest of cork oaks, which keep their leaves all the year through, and
here, by reason of the great shade, we went, not knowing whither, as if
blindfold, only we were conscious of being on rough, rising ground, by
the jolting of our mules and the clatter of their hoofs upon stones; but
after a wearisome, long spell of this business, the trees growing more
scattered and a thin grey light creeping through, we could make out that
we were all together, which was some comfort. From these oaks, we passed
into a wood of chestnuts, and still going up and up, but by such
devious, unseen ways, that I think no man, stranger to these parts,
could pick it out for himself in broad daylight, we came thence into a
great stretch of pine trees, with great rocks scattered amongst them, as
if some mountain had been blown up and fallen in a huge shower of
fragments.
And so, still for ever toiling and scambling upwards, we found ourselves
about seven o'clock, as I should judge by the light beyond the trees and
upon the side of the mountain, with the whole champaign laid out like a
carpet under us on one side, prodigious slopes of rock on either hand,
with only a shrub or a twisted fir here and there, and on the further
side a horrid stark ravine with a cascade of water thundering down in
its midst, and a peak rising beyond, covered with snow, which glittered
in the sunlight like a monstrous heap of white salt.
After resting at this point half an hour to breathe our mules, the
guides got into their saddles, and we did likewise, and so on again
along the side of the ravine, only not of a cluster as heretofore, but
one behind the other in a long line, the mules falling into this order
of themselves as if they had travelled the path an hundred times; but
there was no means of going otherwise, the path being atrociously narrow
and steep, and only fit for wild goats, there being no landrail, coping,
or anything in the world to stay one from being hurled down a thousand
feet, and the mountain sides so inclined that 'twas a miracle the mules
could find foothold and keep their balance. From the bottom of the
ravine came a constant roar of falling water, though we could spy it
only now and then leaping down from one chasm to another; and more than
once our guides would cry to us to stop (and that where our mules had to
keep shifting their feet to get a hold) while some huge boulder,
loosened by the night's rain, flew down across our path in terrific
bounds from the heights above, making the very mountain tremble with the
shock. Not a word spoke we; nay, we had scarce courage at times to draw
breath, for two hours and more of this fearful passage, with no
encouragement from our guides save that one of them did coolly take out
a knife and peel an onion as though he had been on a level, broad road;
and then, reaching a flat space, we came to a stand again before an
ascent that promised to be worse than that we had done. Here we got
down, Moll clinging to our hands and looking around her with large,
frighted eyes.
"Shall we soon be there?" she asked.
And the Don, putting this question in Spanish to the guides, they
pointed upwards to a gap filled with snow, and answered that was the
highest point. This was some consolation, though we could not regard the
rugged way that lay betwixt us and that without quaking. Indeed, I
thought that even Don Sanchez, despite the calm, unmoved countenance he
ever kept, did look about him with a certain kind of uneasiness.
However, taking example from our guides, we unloosed our saddle bags,
and laid out our store of victuals with a hogskin of wine which
rekindled our spirits prodigiously.
While we were at this repast, our guides, starting as if they had caught
a sound (though we heard none save the horrid bursting of water), looked
down, and one of them, clapping two dirty fingers in his mouth, made a
shrill whistle. Then we, looking down, presently spied two mules far
below on the path we had come, but at such a distance that we could
scarce make out whether they were mounted or not.
"Who are they?" asks Don Sanchez, sternly, as I managed to understand.
"Friends," replies one of the fellows, with a grin that seemed to lay
his face in two halves.