weeks before she had been drinking penny ale with a relish, and
that as sour as verjuice. And, indeed, she did carry it mighty high and
artificial, wherever respect and humility were to be commanded. But it
was pretty to see how she would unbend and become her natural self where
her heart was touched by some tender sentiment. How she would empty her
pockets to give to any one with a piteous tale, how she would get from
her horse to pluck wild-flowers by the roadside, and how, one day,
overtaking a poor woman carrying a child painfully on her back, she must
have the little one up on her lap and carry it till we reached the
hamlet where the woman lived, etc. On the fifteenth day we stayed at St.
Denys, and going thence the next morning, had travelled but a couple of
hours when we were caught in a violent storm of hailstones as big as
peas, that was swept with incredible force by a wind rushing through a
deep ravine in the mountains, so that 'twas as much as we could make
headway through it and gain a village which lay but a little distance
from us. And here we were forced to stay all day by another storm of
rain, that followed the hail and continued till nightfall. Many others
besides ourselves were compelled to seek refuge at our inn, and amongst
them a company of Spanish muleteers, for it seems we were come to a pass
leading through the mountains into Spain. These were the first Spaniards
we had yet seen (save the Don), and for all we had heard to their
credit, we could not admire them greatly, being a low-browed,
coarse-featured, ragged crew, and more picturesque than cleanly, besides
stinking intolerably of garlic. By nightfall there was more company than
the inn could accommodate; nevertheless, in respect to our quality, we
were given the best rooms in the house to ourselves.

About eight o'clock, as we were about to sit down to supper, our
innkeeper's wife comes in to tell us that a Spanish grandee is below,
who has been travelling for hours in the storm, and then she asked very
humbly if our excellencies will permit her to lay him a bed in our room
when we have done with it, as she can bestow him nowhere else (the
muleteers filling her house to the very cock loft), and has not the
heart to send him on to St. Denys in this pitiless driving rain. To this
Don Sanchez replies, that a Spanish gentleman is welcome to all we can
offer him, and therewith sends down a mighty civil message, begging his
company at our table.