ent. To keep an hotel
is indeed no sinecure."

Saying this, he led the way to a large and unobjectionable room, its
walls adorned with the sunny landscapes already described. If
perspective and colouring were eccentric, why, we had only to think that
variety was charming, as H. C. observed, and defects became virtues. The
room was well illuminated with gas, whatever might be going on in the
streets; to no tenebrous repast were we invited. The linen was
snow-white. Our host's daughters waited quietly and silently, with a
certain grace of manner: dark-eyed, good-looking young women, with
something both Italian and Spanish about them, whereby we imagined the
buxom lady-mother was probably Catalonian.

Throughout Catalonia we observed that the women after a certain age--by
no means old age--grow inordinately stout. Time after time a little
whipper-snapper, lean, shrivelled and short would enter a dining-room
followed by an enormous spouse, who came crushing down upon him like a
Himalaya mountain upon a sand-hill. They would take their seat at a
table, the lady with a great deal of difficult arranging, and the little
husband would gaze up at the huge wife with adoration in his eyes, as
proudly as if she had been the Venus de Milo come to life with all her
arms and legs about her and a fair proportion of garments. The back is
fitted to the burden, but here the order of things was reversed--the
wife's broad shoulders must needs bear the weight of life.

There were no stout ladies in the dining-room to-night. At different
parts of the long table sat some eight or ten people of various nations.
Opposite us were two Englishmen separated by a Spaniard. They were of
one party, yet never spoke a word from the time they entered to the time
they left. Occasionally they glared at each other on passing a dish or
the wine of the country, which was supplied _ad libitum_. What the
entente cordiale or bone of contention we never discovered; every meal
they kept to their silent programme, until it became almost oppressive.
Once or twice we thought they were perhaps monks of La Trappe in
disguise, but gave up the idea as far-fetched. The Englishmen, at any
rate, judging by expression, were certainly not devoted to fasting and
penance. They were young, and the world held attractions not at all in
harmony with solitary cells and the midnight mass. We never solved the
Silent Enigma, as H. C. called them.

Not far off sat a priest, who no dou