When it was put on top of the omnibus, and we were in probably
unparalleled readiness for starting to the station, at an hour when
scarcely anybody else in Valladolid was up, a mule composing a portion
of our team immediately fell down, as if startled too abruptly from a
somnambulic dream. I really do not remember how it was got to its feet
again; but I remember the anguish of the delay and the fear that we
might not be able to escape from Valladolid after all our pains in
trying for the Sud-Express at that hour; and I remember that when we
reached the station we found that the Sud-Express was forty minutes
behind time and that we were a full hour after that before starting for
Madrid.
V
PHASES OF MADRID
I fancied that a kind of Gothic gloom was expressed in the black
wine-skins of Old Castile, as contrasted with the fairer color of those
which began to prevail even so little south of Burgos as Valladolid. I
am not sure that the Old Castilian wine-skins derived their blackness
from the complexion of the pigs, or that there are more pale pigs in the
south than in the north of Spain; I am sure only of a difference in the
color of the skins, which may have come from a difference in the
treatment of them.
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