fernal facility for Satanic
gambling. Cigarettes are cheap, and so are knives. There is an Alameda,
where the band plays, and a passable imitation, of the Puerta del Sol,
less the fountain, in the broad arcaded Plaza de la Constitution. There
is a small theatre, a spacious bull-ring, and several commodious
churches, where Pepita can talk the language of fans to her heart's
content. Every attraction of Madrid which could reasonably be expected
is to be had, I repeat, and hidalgos and sloe-eyed senoras speckle the
promenades in the gloaming, and impart a mingled aroma of garlic and
gentility, pomade and pretentiousness, to the chief town of Guipuzcoa.
San Sebastian would be for Madrilenos what Paris is for Bostonians, if a
few of the attractions of the "only court," which could not reasonably
be expected, were not lacking--say an occasional walk round of the
Intransigentes, to show their political muscles; a grandiloquent, frothy
word-tempest in the Congress, and the Sunday cock-fight. I am speaking,
be it understood, of San Sebastian in ordinary summers. A short
twelvemonth before my visit, a pair of pouting English lips told me it
was "awfully jolly."

At the date with which I am concerned, it was anything but "awfully
jolly." The fifteen thousand rich visitors who were wont to flock into
the city during the season had gone elsewhere to recruit their health on
the sands and lose their money at the gaming-tables. They had been
frightened to the coasts of France by the apparition of Carlism, and San
Sebastian was plaintive. Her streets and her coffers were empty. The
campamento of bathing-huts was ranged as usual on the velvet rim of the
ear-like bay, but no bathers were there. There were more domestics than
guests in the hotels; and at the _table d'hote_ three sat down in a
saloon designed for a hundred to breakfast in; and we had no butter. The
peasants in the country round were afraid to bring in the produce of
their dairies and barn-yards. The bull-ring was to let; conscientious
barbers shaved each other or dressed the hair on the wax busts in their
windows, in order to keep alive the traditions of their craft; the
fiddlers in the concert-room of the casino scraped lamentations to
imaginary listeners. A Sahara of dust had settled on the curtain of the
theatre, and fleet-footed spiders made forages athwart it from one
cobwebby stronghold to another. The once festive resort had lost its
spirits completely, and all on ac