n who had found the body made a
merit of his discovery which he dramatized to a group of spectators
without rousing them to a murmur or stirring them from their statuesque
fixity. His own excitement in comparison seemed indecent.

X

It was now three o'clock and I thought I might be in time to draw some
money on my letter of credit, at the bank which we had found standing in
a pleasant garden in the course of our stroll through the town the night
before. We had said, How charming it would be to draw money in such an
environment; and full of the romantic expectation, I offered my letter
at the window, where after a discreet interval I managed to call from
their preoccupation some unoccupied persons within. They had not a very
financial air, and I thought them the porters they really were, with
some fear that I had come after banking-hours. But they joined in
reassuring me, and told me that if I would return after five o'clock the
proper authorities would be there.

I did not know then what late hours Spain kept in every way; but I
concealed my surprise; and I came back at the time suggested, and
offered my letter at the window with a request for ten pounds, which I
fancied I might need. A clerk took the letter and scrutinized it with
a deliberation which I thought it scarcely merited. His self-respect
doubtless would not suffer him to betray that he could not read the
English of it; and with an air of wishing to consult higher authority he
carried it to another clerk at a desk across the room. To this official
it seemed to come as something of a blow. Tie made a show of reading it
several times over, inside and out, and then from the pigeonhole of his
desk he began to accumulate what I supposed corroborative documents,
or _pieces justificatives._ When lie had amassed a heap several inches
thick, he rose and hurried out through the gate, across the hall where
I sat, into a room beyond. He returned without in any wise referring
himself to me and sat down at his desk again. The first clerk explained
to the anxious face with which I now approached him that the second
clerk had taken my letter to the director. I went back to my seat and
waited fifteen minutes longer, fifteen having passed already; then I
presented my anxious face, now somewhat indignant, to the first clerk
again. "What is the director doing with my letter?" The first clerk
referred my question to the second clerk, who answered from his place,
"He is