the wall--in Spain you see mandolins in every corner--and I asked the
little girl, who had been waiting on us, if she knew how to play it.

"No," she replied. "But Don Jose does play well!"

"Do me the kindness to sing me something," I said to him, "I'm
passionately fond of your national music."

"I can't refuse to do anything for such a charming gentleman, who gives
me such excellent cigars," responded Don Jose gaily, and having made
the child give him the mandolin, he sang to his own accompaniment. His
voice, though rough, was pleasing, the air he sang was strange and sad.
As to the words, I could not understand a single one of them.

"If I am not mistaken," said I, "that's not a Spanish air you have just
been singing. It's like the _zorzicos_ I've heard in the Provinces,* and
the words must be in the Basque language."

* The _privileged Provinces_, Alava, Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and a part of
Navarre, which all enjoy special _fueros_. The Basque language is spoken
in these countries.

"Yes," said Don Jose, with a gloomy look. He laid the mandolin down on
the ground, and began staring with a peculiarly sad expression at the
dying fire. His face, at once fierce and noble-looking, reminded me,
as the firelight fell on it, of Milton's Satan. Like him, perchance,
my comrade was musing over the home he had forfeited, the exile he had
earned, by some misdeed. I tried to revive the conversation, but so
absorbed was he in melancholy thought, that he gave me no answer.