these amenities do not prevent a little bargaining, the one asking more than he means to take, apparently for the purpose of appearing to give way perforce to the overmastering charms of his customer, who does not disdain to use either her fan or her eyes in the encounter.  The old woman will bargain just as much, but always with the same politeness.  When foreigners walk in and abruptly ask for what they want with an air of immense superiority, as is the custom in our country, they are not unnaturally looked upon as muy bruto, and at the best it is accounted for by their being rude heretics from abroad, and knowing no better.

In Madrid and some of the large towns it is possible that the people have become accustomed to our apparent discourtesy, just as in some places—­Granada especially—­spoiled by long intimacy with tourists, the beggars have become importunate, and to some extent impudent; but in places a little removed from such a condition of modern “civilisation,” the effect produced by many a well-meaning but ordinary Saxon priding himself on his superiority, and without any intention of being ill-bred or ill-mannered, is that of disgust and contemptuous annoyance.

No Spaniard will put up with an overbearing or bullying manner, even though he may not understand the language in which it is expressed; it raises in him all the dormant pride and prejudice which sleep beneath his own innate courtesy, and he probably treats the offending traveller with the profound contempt he feels for him, if with nothing worse.  A little smiling and good-natured chaff when things go wrong, as they so often do in travelling, or when the leisurely expenditure of time, which is as natural to the Spaniard as it is irritating to our notions of how things ought to move, will go infinitely farther to set things right than black looks and a scolding tongue, even in an unknown language.

When English people come back from Spain complaining of discourtesy, or what they choose to call insult, I know very well on whose head to fit the accusing cap, and it is always those people whose super-excellent opinion of themselves, and of their infinite importance at home, makes them certain of meeting with some such experience among a people to whom the mere expression “a snob” is by no means to be understood.

That railway travelling in Spain calls for a great exercise of patience from those accustomed to Flying Dutchmen and such-like expresses is quite true; though, by the way, many of the lines are in French hands, and served by French officials.  It may safely be said, however, even at the present day, that those who are always in a hurry would do well to choose some other country for their holiday jaunt.  A well-known English engineer, of French extraction, trying to get some business through in Madrid, once described himself as feeling “like a cat in hell, without claws.”  Perhaps the ignorance of the language, which constituted his clawless condition, was a fortunate circumstance for him.  But that was a good while ago, and Madrid moves more quickly now.