“I have not given myself any trouble in waiting on him.”

This proceeds in part from idleness and in part from Castilian pride.  A Castilian should not lower himself, they say, by attending on a Gavacho, by which name the Spaniards know the French, and, indeed, all foreigners.  It is not so offensive as the Turkish appellation of dog, or the damned foreigner of the English.  Of course, persons who have travelled or have had a liberal education do not speak in this way, and a respectable foreigner will find reasonable Spaniards as he will find reasonable Turks and Englishmen.

On the second night of my journey I slept at Agreda, a small and ugly town, or rather village.  There Sister Marie d’Agreda became so crazy as to write a life of the Virgin, which she affirmed to have been dictated to her by the Mother of the Lord.  The State Inquisitors had given me this work to read when I was under the Leads, and it had nearly driven me mad.

We did ten Spanish leagues a day, and long and weary leagues they seemed to me.  One morning I thought I saw a dozen Capuchins walking slowly in front of us, but when we caught them up I found they were women of all ages.

“Are they mad?” I said to Senior Andrea.

“Not at all.  They wear the Capuchin habit out of devotion, and you would not find a chemise on one of them.”

There was nothing surprising in their not having chemises, for the chemise is a scarce article in Spain, but the idea of pleasing God by wearing a Capuchin’s habit struck me as extremely odd.  I will here relate an amusing adventure which befell me on my way.

At the gate of a town not far from Madrid I was asked for my passport.  I handed it over, and got down to amuse myself.  I found the chief of the customs’ house engaged in an argument with a foreign priest who was on his way to Madrid, and had no passport for the capital.  He skewed one he had had for Bilbao, but the official was not satisfied.  The priest was a Sicilian, and I asked him why he had exposed himself to being placed in this disagreeable predicament.  He said he thought it was unnecessary to have a passport in Spain when one had once journeyed in the country.

“I want to go to Madrid,” said he to me, “and hope to obtain a chaplaincy in the house of a grandee.  I have a letter for him.”

“Shew it; they will let you pass then.”

“You are right.”

The poor priest drew out the letter and skewed it to the official, who opened it, looked at the signature, and absolutely shrieked when he saw the name Squillace.

“What, senor abbe! you are going to Madrid with a letter from Squillace, and you dare to skew it?”

The clerks, constables, and hangers-on, hearing that the hated Squillace, who would have been stoned to death if it had not been for the king’s protection, was the poor abbe’s only patron, began to beat him violently, much to the poor Sicilian’s astonishment.