described (do not be afraid, I am not going to
describe it again) comes in. A divine power
of appetite comes to me. I do not follow my
own advice. I decapitate eggs with what
apoplectic effects I will presently relate. I
gash the steaks as if they were cut from
enemies I had slain in battle. I anatomise the
fish. I toss off the coffee. I part the rolls.
I smile round me benignly, and feel happy.
"Heart full and eyes full—bad," says the
proverb; " but head full and stomach full—
good, good:" and now, having laid sure
foundations for a long day's work, and filled
the hopper with material for all hands to go
on with (I keep no cats that do not catch
mice) and for idle stomachs or idle hands
Satan still finds work in fretting or back-
biting, if not in stealing. I prepare for the
playful dessert that always concludes a Spanish
breakfast. I turn to the great central altar
of an épergne that, decorated with flowers,
gives the table rather an operatic character.
I toy with a fig or two; trifle and unstring a
bunch of grapes. I peel a melting slice of
melon, and lastly, following the national
custom—very refreshing and anti-feverish
it is—I drink two tumblers of sparkling
water, just blushed with wine, large inky
decanters of which stand on the table. I had
done, I felt, what the Reverend Mr. England
expected every one to do—his duty—his
Sunday duty.

All breakfast time I had been watching
Fortywinks, the great traveller, who, with
sanguineous face, sat opposite to me, plunging
into Spanish conversations, and performing
in them wonderful feats of agility by leaping
from one language to another. I delighted
to listen to the contrast of the sharp, clear
cut Castilian with the soft, gliding, kissing,
lover-like Andalusian. I never quite settled
that th question. At Toledo they laugh at
you if you say Saragosa: they call it Tharagotha.
Yet at Seville they quiz you for
saying Granada, when it should be Granatha;
then at Malaga again I got soundly rated
for calling Andaluz Andaluth, when I should
have said Andaluce: but then the correction
came to me as I was walking between two
Spanish ladies, and the scorn came from
such pretty lips, the contempt from such
twilight eyes, the critical laughter from
such coral caves, that I could have wished to
have had a week of such pretty scolding:
and as I walked up and down in that summer
dusk along the crowded parade, within sound
of the sea, that seemed to murmur solos and
dirgeful themes between the hurricane tornadoes
of the band; as l walked in an endless ebb
and flow of priests, officers, and nun-like ladies
in black, under the lamp-lit trees, where the
water-seller plied his innocent trade and the
very peasants, in their hussar-jackets, shirt
sleeves, and close-cropped heads, were grave,
courteous, and sedate; I fancied myself in a
quiet side-walk of the Elysian fields, walking
between Dante's Beatrice and Shakespeare's
Rosalind, those blessed queens of the world's
dream-women.

But let me get to the fatal symptoms of
that apoplectic breakfast. Shall I ever forget
that numbing sleep that came over me within,
an hour; that dreadful lotos-eating indifference
to labour; that tendency to look for a
sofa and to go into a hot, steaming sleep
which seemed the precursor of a fever; that
pinching at my liver; that full-blooded
face; that thirst and reptile torpidity;
that terrible conviction that I had made a
mistake and had better have breakfasted off a
mere slice of melon, a roll, and a cup of fat
brown chocolate-paste. I never sinned again,
and Apoplexy left me to go and throttle a fat
canon in the next street, which served him
(the canon) right.

But I must get on to dinner, Spanish
dinner, a thing as peculiarly national as
liquorice, oranges, or garlic. As for lunch
(lonch, as they call it), it is a mere social
accident; not an institution at all. It is an
impromptu of rolls and butter, grapes and
melon, eaten with wine and water
interludes, in a room closely blinded up as if
the landlord were just dead. But dinner—
dinner is "something like," as Spanker used
to say.

I am at that Fonda Londres in the Plaza
Infanta. You may easily guess what the
half hour before the mesa redonda (table
d'hôte) begins, the hour being five, was. I
am off after dinner to see the house of Pontius
Pilate, then to the government-pottery, and
then to the cannon-foundry, so have ordered
horses to the door at six, and am waiting for
my bill which I want to scan over.

"Notta," they call the bill, and a notable
bill it is. The waiter brings it on a tray,
the charges are so heavy. It is one yard long,
imperial measure.

"Let me overhaul it," says Spanker, who
prides himself on his complete knowledge of
the Spanish language. "I'll knock some of
it off. They won't do me. I know a thing
or two. I'm too much for them."

I handed it.

"' Labandera,' lavender. O that's washing
—'sixteen reals.'

"'Pollo.'—That's chicken—'eight reals.'

"'Pan.'—By Jove, what's Pan to do with it?
yes, bread; yes, yes,—' one real.' I say, old
man, send some one to my digging for my
dictionary. What the deuce do they mean by
'Cuarto'—quatro—four? O, no. I see; Room,
sixteen reals. That's too much.

"'Two Amontillados; twenty-eight reals.'
That's sticking it in, rather—but let it go!

"'Twelve Cigarros; eighteen reals.'

"'Two Convidadas comer;'—two fellows to
grub. That's me and Driver;—'twenty-four
reals.' Knock four off that.

"One something roto. What's roto? O,roast.
Ah, so it is, roast. Yes, of course, roast. One
roast vaso—whatever that may be—five reals.
Too much.