We Supposed Then, And In Fact I Had Supposed Till This
Moment, That It Was Queen Victoria Of Great Britain Who Was Meant; But
Now I Realize That It Must Have Been The Queen Consort Of Spain, Who
Seems Already To Have Made Herself So Liked There.
She, of course, comes every summer to San Sebastian, and presently our
driver took us to see the royal villa by the shore, withdrawn, perhaps
from a sense of its extreme plainness, not to say ugliness, among its
trees and vines behind its gates and walls.
Our driver excused himself
for not being able to show us through it; he gladly made us free of an
unrestricted view of the royal bathing-pavilion, much more frankly
splendid in its gilding, beside the beach. Other villas ranked
themselves along the hillside, testifying to the gaiety of the social
life in summers past and summers to come. In the summer just past the
gaiety may have been interrupted by the strikes taking in the newspapers
the revolutionary complexion which it was now said they did not wear. At
least, when the King had lately come to fetch the royal household away
nothing whatever happened, and the "constitutional guarantees,"
suspended amidst the ministerial anxieties, were restored during the
month, with the ironical applause of the liberal press, which pretended
that there had never been any need of their suspension.
VI
All pleasures, mixed or unmixed, must end, and the qualified joy of our
drive through San Sebastian came to a close on our return to our hotel
well within the second hour, almost within its first half.
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