he inns were miserable, the fare uncertain and
meagre at the best, and there were many other afflictions to vex the
tourist, he evidently enjoyed this expedition to the full. On his way
from Barcelona to Madrid he had for companions a painter of repute and
two officers, and to these he used to read aloud _Don Quixote_, and,
he says, "I assure you this was a pleasure to me such as I have seldom
enjoyed, to witness the effect this extraordinary book produces on the
people from whose very blood and character it is drawn.... All of
them used to beg me to read it to them every time we got into our
cart--like children for toys and sugar-plums." In Madrid he studied
carefully the language and literature, his tastes and opportunities
leading him to lay the solid foundation of what was to be the main
work of his life. The society that he met here was mainly that of the
foreign diplomatists, but, agreeable as it was, it did not distract
him from his studies or from his observation of the people among whom
he was placed. In a letter to this country he said, "What seems mere
fiction and romance in other countries is matter of observation
here, and in all that relates to manners Cervantes and Le Sage are
historians; for when you have crossed the Pyrenees you have not only
passed from one country and climate to another, but you have gone back
a couple of centuries in your chronology, and find the people still
in that kind of poetical existence which we have not only long since
lost, but which we have long since ceased to credit on the reports of
our ancestors."

Although it would be interesting to linger over the passages dealing
with Spain, it is perhaps better to turn to his account of leaving it,
which he did under the most singular circumstances--namely, as one
of a band of contrabandistas. Not that he wore a mask and filled his
purse by robbing unoffending travelers; instead, he joined this
party of accomplished smugglers, who used to carry on the business of
smuggling dollars from Seville to Lisbon and bring back English goods
in the same way. For eight days he was in their company, and he says,
"I have seldom passed eight more interesting days, for by the very
novelty and strangeness of everything--sleeping out every night but
one, and then in the house of the chief of our band; dining
under trees at noon; living on a footing of perfect equality and
good-fellowship with people who are liable every day to be shot or
hanged by