waxy figs, of a viscous sweetness, tasting
like a great sweetmeat pudding.  Then the
melon, marked in grooves by nature for the
knife, filled with a yellow nectareous fluid,
But I forget the wine: that took at least half
an hour getting, because the landlord kept
no wine himself, and had quarrelled or run
in debt with every other landlord for a mile
round.  But he at last came back—his path
marked with perspiration—griping the bottle
with his hot streaming hand.  I bowed, drew
out the stopple of smashed vine leaves, and
poured him and myself out a glass.  He drank
it; and, smacking his lips, with a wink at his
wife, as much as to say, "How I shall stick
it on when it comes to the bill!" proceeded
to mop himself all over with a dirty table-
cloth, lying ready for the lavandera, or
washerwoman.  I found the wine a fiery,
sweet, luscious Malaga wine, not unlike
brandied raisin.  As I went up the creaking
loft stairs, for a two-hours siesta—for I had
to ride on horseback from there over the
mountains,—I saw the landlord get down the
ink-horn and begin my bill.

He had just sanded it when I came down to
proceed on my journey.  I won't say much
about it; but it was the most imaginative bill
I ever perused.  Never was the hot walk of a fat
landlord so amply atoned for.  I had mounted
my mule, the guide's saddle-bags were adjusted,
my Marselles jacket was tied in front of my
saddle, the whole inn was drawn up to see
me depart into yonder hazy glow of sunlight
that fills up the road like a fog.  I suddenly
bethink me of something I had forgotten.
"Señor Landlord, can you tell me if there is
a Don Quixote living anywhere near this
town?"

"Quixote," replies the landlord, thrusting
my money into his pocket; "no, I never heard
the name."

My next search for the Don was in the
shops of Cordova.  Perhaps, I thought, the
old veteran, ruined by some accident of the
late French war, has had to sell off his
horse and greyhound, and come to this old
sultan's city to gain an honest penny, and
save his grey hairs from disgrace.  "I will
find him," I said, drawing my Leghorn hat
over my eyes, and shouldering my green
umbrella bordered with scarlet, that I used
to defy the searching sun-enemy of unaddled
brains.

I looked in at the print-shops.  There
were pictures of tight-booted grisettes with
round arms and hawk's eyes; saints by the
dozen, enough for all the sinners' houses in
Cordova; simpering glossy-coloured Murillos;
a portrait of the Queen of the Sandwich
Islands, who is believed to be of Spanish
descent—the very image of an unhealthy sow
with piggy sensual eyes, flapping mouth, and
an acre of yellow cheek.  There was the
Emperor, too, of the Billiard-marker Islands, with
his caricature-nose, and thievish, vulture-eyes
stealthily cruel; and there was the King of
the Indigo Country, who looked like a sottish
martinet, a mixture of pipe-clay and champagne.
As I looked at a picture of the
Leviathan, side by side with a sketch of
Majos dancing at the great fair of Seville,
the proprietor came to the gilded door for a
breath of air.  The Don?   Why it is a huge
Eugène Sue sort of Frenchman, with a stiff
black beard, cropped head, and bullet eyes.
No more the Don than it is the Dneiper.
I go in, however, and purchase portraits of
that vulgar Hercules Bomba.

A little daunted, I look into the barber's
shop opposite. There is an officer seated in an
arm-chair on a sort of throne, his head—the
back of which fits into a hollow in the
chair—facing the barber's guitar, which lies
ready on the shelf for customers who are
obliged to wait.  The busy Figaro—war-dancing
round the unhappy man, who is
veiled and bearded with snowy, frothing
lather—holds up to his stiff, black, bossy
chin, the veritable brass basin of Mambranto,
which the Don mistook for an enchanted and
villanous knight's helmet, and wore many a
hot day on the brown La Manchan sierras.
There is the curve, bitten out of the circle for
the chin.  The Don—I watch from behind the
windows through rows of red oils and French
pomato-pots, dusty wigs and false moustachios
—the Don rises; and, still all lathery
and hidden, turns to the corner brass-tap
basin to wash and be clean.  I see his
arm circle with that extreme tail-corner of
the towel (the Spaniard is, as to washing,
slightly hydrophobic).  He turns.  The Don?
No!  It is that old leathery-faced general,
with the cast-steel eye-lids and pinched
mouth; evidently a mean, bouncing disciplinarian;
only great at court-martials and in
the presence of trembling beggar soldiers in
yellow jackets and hempen sandals.  Go to!
That is old General Whiteliver, who ran
away from the Moors at Melilla, and was all
but cashiered, only he bribed the commandant
to depose that the Moors were four thousand
stronger than they were.  O, chivalry of
Spain!  buried under the waves at Lepanto;
is the diver yet born that shall bring thee
up from that brave wreck and welter of
dead heroes?

What stores did I not visit?  Notably
a lemonade-store, where a dirty red curtain
with forked fringe flaunted at the door,
and where a Barbary monkey, chained by
the middle, gibbered in impotent malice at
the red and green paroqueet from the Brazils,
that sat scratching its top-knot with
grave sagacity and contemplative approval,
while the jacketed proprietor smoked a
cigarette with that calm indifference to custom
peculiar to the half-Moorish Spaniard
who spends all to-day in talking of to-morrow,
when every good thing is to be done, and
every thing set right.  The golden age ia
always to-morrow (mañana).