But now, I saw, was my chance, and when the friend who had been lunching
with us asked if we would not like to drive across that neutral
territory and go into Spain a bit, it seemed as if the dream of my youth
had suddenly renewed itself with the purpose of coming immediately true.
It was a charmingly characteristic foretaste of Spanish travel that the
driver of the state coach which we first engaged should, when we
presently came back, have replaced himself by another for no other
reason than, perhaps, that he could so provide us with a worse horse. I
am not sure of this theory, and I do not insist upon it, but it seems
plausible.
As soon as we rounded the rock of Gibraltar and struck across a flatter
country than I supposed could be found within fifty miles of Gibraltar,
we were swept by a blast which must have come from the Pyrenees, it was
so savagely rough and cold. It may be always blowing there as a Spanish
protest against the English treatment of the neutral territory; in fact,
it does not seem quite the thing to build over that space as the English
have done, though the structures are entirely peaceable, and it is not
strange that the Spaniards have refused to meet them half-way with a
good road over it, or to let them make one the whole way.
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