In two days I arrived at Bordeaux, a beautiful town coming only second to Paris, with respect to Lyons be it said.  I spent a week there, eating and drinking of the best, for the living there is the choicest in the world.

I transferred my bill of exchange for eight thousand francs to a Madrid house, and crossed the Landes, passing by Mont de Marsan, Bayonne, and St. Jean de Luz, where I sold my post-chaise.  From St. Jean de Luz I went to Pampeluna by way of the Pyrenees, which I crossed on mule-back, my baggage being carried by another mule.  The mountains struck me as higher than the Alps.  In this I may possibly be wrong, but I am certain that the Pyrenees are the most picturesque, fertile, and agreeable of the two.

At Pampeluna a man named Andrea Capello took charge of me and my luggage, and we set out for Madrid.  For the first twenty leagues the travelling was easy enough, and the roads as good as any in France.  These roads did honour to the memory of M. de Gages, who had administered Navarre after the Italian war, and had, as I was assured, made the road at his own expense.  Twenty years earlier I had been arrested by this famous general; but he had established a claim on posterity greater than any of his victories.  These laurels were dyed in blood, but the maker of a good road is a solid benefactor of all posterity.

In time this road came to an end, and thenceforth it would be incorrect to say that the roads were bad, for, to tell the truth, there were no roads at all.  There were steep ascents and violent descents, but no traces of carriage wheels, and so it is throughout the whole of Old Castile.  There are no good inns, only miserable dens scarce good enough for the muleteers, who make their beds beside their animals.  Signor or rather Senor Andrea tried to choose the least wretched inns for me, and after having provided for the mules he would go round the entire village to get something for me to eat.  The landlord would not stir; he shewed me a room where I could sleep if I liked, containing a fire-place, in which I could light a fire if I thought fit, but as to procuring firewood or provisions, he left that all to me.  Wretched Spain!

The sum asked for a night’s accommodation was less than a farmer would ask in France or Germany for leave to sleep in his barn; but there was always an extra charge of a ‘pizetta por el ruido’.  The pizetta is worth four reals; about twenty-one French sous.

The landlord smoked his paper cigarette nonchalantly enough, blowing clouds of smoke into the air with immense dignity.  To him poverty was as good as riches; his wants were small, and his means sufficed for them.  In no country in Europe do the lower orders live so contentedly on a very little as in Spain.  Two ounces of white bread, a handful of roast chestnuts or acorns (called bellotas in Spanish) suffice to keep a Spaniard for a day.  It is his glory to say when a stranger is departing from his abode,—­