II


As soon as we had accepted our fate, while as yet the sun had not set
behind the clouds which had kept it out of our rooms all day, we hurried
out not only to escape the rigors of our hotel, but to see as soon as we
could, as much as we could of the famous city. We had got an excellent
cup of tea in the glass-roofed pavilion of our beautiful cold
dining-room, and now our spirits rose level with the opportunities of
the entrancing walk we took along the course of the Arlanson. I say
course, because that is the right word to use of a river, but really
there was no course in the Arlanzon. Between the fine, wide Embankments
and under the noble bridges there were smooth expanses of water
(naturally with women washing at them), which reflected like an
afterglow of the evening sky the splendid masses of yarn hung red from
the dyer's vats on the bank. The expanses of water were bordered by
wider spaces of grass which had grown during the rainless summer, but
which were no doubt soon to be submerged under the autumnal torrent the
river would become. The street which shaped itself to the stream was a
rather modern avenue, leading to a beautiful public garden, with the
statues and fountains proper to a public garden, and densely shaded
against the three infernal months of the Burgos year. But the houses
were glazed all along their fronts with the sun-traps which we had noted
in the Basque country, and which do not wait for a certain date in the
almanac to do the work of steam-heating. They gave a tempting effect to
the house-fronts, but they could not distract our admiration from the