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and hard to his dependents, loving all kinds of splendor, and a glutton.
As I brought an especial letter to him from the Nuncio, he made a great dinner for me, to which he invited the Governor, the Captain of the Port, Count Teba, and all the persons he was aware I knew, several of the nobility of the city, etc., in all about forty persons.
His cook made good the boast it is said he ventured, when the Bishop received him, ‘that the king should not dine so well as the Bishop of Malaga,’ for such a luxurious dinner I have rarely beheld, and never one so elaborate.
The bread, as he told me himself, came from five-and-twenty miles off, because the baker is better; all the water is brought on mules fifty miles, from a fountain that has the reputation of stimulating the appetite and promoting digestion; he had meats on the table from every part of Spain, pastry from Holland, and wines from all over Europe.
In short, taking his eloquence, his culture, and his dinner together, he is as near the original of Gil Bias' Bishop of Granada as a priest of the nineteenth century need be; and if he should ever come to the archbishopric, which is probable, nothing will be wanting but the shrewd, practical secretary, to complete the group which Le Sage has so admirably drawn.
My journey to Gibraltar was bad. The first day it rained the whole time, so that I was wet through to the skin, and yet was able to advance no farther than Marbella, where I was received by the hostess of the poor little inn with a genuine, faithful kindness I can never forget.
This is generally the case in Spain.
If you really want assistance, if you are really suffering, you are sure to meet nothing but good-will.
In Gibraltar I remained from the morning of the 30th September to noon on the 3d of October, and passed my time pleasantly, except that it made me not a little homesick to find so many countrymen there, to hear English everywhere talked, and to look forth from the summit of the rock upon the Atlantic, which I had not seen for above three years, and which seems but a slight separation between me and my home. . . . .
The governor, General Don,1 to whom I had letters, was very kind to me and sent me through all the fortifications,. . . . and gave me for my guide an officer who explained it all to me, without which I should hardly have been wiser than before I went.
As I passed along from one battery to another, until I had seen eleven hundred cannon that could be manned in fifteen minutes, it seemed to me as if it were a luxury and waste of fortification; as if it could be defended against all the
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1 Later, General Sir George Don, G. C. B. The name always puzzled the Spaniards, who asked, ‘Don what?’
Boston, J. R. Osgood and company, 1876.
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