moment in glad relief.




VII


One house in some forgotten square commemorates the state in which the
Castilian nobles used to live in Burgos before Toledo, and then
Valladolid, contested the primacy of the grim old capital of the
northern uplands. We stayed for a moment to glance from our carriage
through the open portal into its leafy _patio_ shivering in the cold,
and then we bade our guide hurry back with us to the hot luncheon which
would be the only heat in our hotel. But to reach this we had to pass
through another square, which we found full of peasants' ox-carts and
mule-teams; and there our guide instantly jumped down and entered into a
livelier quarrel with those peaceable men and women than I could
afterward have believed possible in Spain. I bade him get back to his
seat beside the driver, who was abetting him with an occasional guttural
and whom I bade turn round and go another way. I said that I had hired
this turnout, and I was master, and I would be obeyed; but it seemed
that I was wrong. My proud hirelings never left off their dispute till
somehow the ox-carts and mule-teams were jammed together, and a
thoroughfare found for us. Then it was explained that those peasants
were always blocking that square in that way and that I had, however
unwillingly, been discharging the duty of a public-spirited citizen in
compelling them to give way. I did not care for that; I prized far more
the quiet with which they had taken the whole affair. It was the first
exhibition of the national repose of manner which we were to see so