Théophile Gautier - Wanderings in Spain

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BY

THOPHILE GAUTIER.

BRIDGE OF IRUN.

With numerous Engravings.

LONDON:

INGRAM, COOKE, AND CO.

MDCCCLIII.

WANDERINGS IN SPAIN.

BY

THOPHILE GAUTIER.

With numerous Engravings.

LONDON:

INGRAM, COOKE, AND CO.

MDCCCLIII.

WANDERINGS IN SPAIN,

ETC. ETC.

Departure from ParisSubterranean DwellingsChteau-RegnaultToursChtelleraultAngoulmeThe LandesCubzacBordeauxThe TheatreThe CathedralSt. Michael's TowerMummified Corpsesthe Museum.

A few weeks ago (April, 1840), I happened, in an off-hand manner, to give utterance to the following phrase:"I should like to go to Spain." Five or six days afterwards, my friends had suppressed the prudent "I should like," with which I had qualified my wish, and had told every one who chose to listen that I was about to undertake a trip to Spain. This positive formula was soon followed by the interrogation, "When do you set out?" while I, without thinking of the obligation under which I was placing myself, replied, "In a week." At the end of the week people began to manifest some astonishment at seeing me still in Paris. "I thought you were at Madrid," said one. "What! come back?" asked another. I saw at once that I owed my friends an absence of several months, and that I must pay the debt with the least possible delay, unless I wished to be mercilessly pursued, without a moment's respite, by my obliging creditors. The lobbies of the theatres, the various asphaltic and bituminous pavements of the Boulevards, were to me forbidden luxuries for the time being. All I could obtain was the grace of three or four days, and on the 5th of May I commenced relieving my native land of my importunate presence, by scrambling into the Bordeaux diligence.

I shall pass very rapidly over the first few posts, which possess nothing worthy of observation. Right and left stretch all kinds of crops, streaked like tiger or zebra skins, and bearing a most satisfactory resemblance to a tailor's book, in which are pasted his various specimens of trowsers and waistcoat patterns. Although these kinds of views are productive of great delight to farmers, landlords, and other worthies of a similar stamp, they afford but meagre entertainment to the enthusiastic and graphic traveller, who, spy-glass in hand, sets out to note the peculiarities of the universe in the same manner as a police agent does those of an individual. Having left Paris in the evening, my first impressions, after passing Versailles, are but so many feeble sketches