VI.

A SPANISH CASTLE.

THE TRAVELLER'S JOY.

"Never perform to-morrow what can possibly be done-the day after."-SPANISH PROVERB.

66

O you're rubbing up the household gods, Mrs. Caddy," said Mr. de Leon, whom I met acting lion and roaring like any nightingale at Lady John Percival's party. "Come and see us; I'll thrum the guitar to you and make you fancy yourself in Spain. We

live Spain. Dine with us on Tuesday and stay

the night. Come and see a traveller's house, with all his collections and recollections."

"The plums picked from every national life, I suppose; as landscapes are sketched from the best bits of the scenery."

"No, only pomegranates. We stick to Spain; it is an epitome of the world."

I accepted the invitation gladly, and when De Leon was called away to slip his baritone into a madrigal I continued my own reflections. "The traveller gains more pleasure than the collector. One fills his mind with objects-joys for ever; the other fills his baggage. One views things in their relation to surrounding life; the other is burdened with the dread of custom-houses and over-weight of luggage: he wins his prize, but loses his temper." The madrigal came to nothing, so Leon came back to me. Conversation flourishes better than music at Percival Lodge.

"One would not wish to be a Cook's tourist," said De Leon, "still less the microscopic seer who is always on the watch for something to pick up; but it is pleasant to bathe in foreign waters, to perfume one's life, as it were, with a foreign essence. I go abroad for change of thought as well as air. I make the universe my university." But Leon was rather an easy-going than a learned man.

"The wide-seeing traveller's joy begins where the dilettante's ends; at a taste for trifles, the mere pepper that flavours foreign travel."

"The living saint is more precious than a relic of him in a glass case," said I, being called upon for a parenthesis.

"Collectors, too, have various sub-genera," proceeded De Leon. "One will go miles for cheap

boots, gloves, silks, or cigars; another will fumble all day underground at Athens or Granada on the chance of finding a bit of tile, losing a wealth of sight and memory, and yet not probing deep enough to make his excavations useful. It is a sort of dust-sifting."

"He had better bring home a photograph."

"I hate photographs," said he. "They kill remembrance."

A French artist lounged up to us. "I bless the beauty that cannot be photographed, that cannot be focussed!" he exclaimed.

"This is Guillemin," whispered Leon. "He has a soul. I'll get him to come and meet you at dinner. You'll be with us at five on Tuesday?"

M. Guillemin spoke little English, but he sentimentalized on art and his own individuality in the rapturous and delightful way that a Frenchman can command at pleasure. A listener is a bottle of champagne to him,-fires him equally well. I am a receptacle into which any talker may pour his ideas; and Leon is always charmed with an agreeable guest such as this M. Guillemin. Leon was due at another late season party, and he left me rather wondering at his ways. How came he to be called something mysterious de Leon, and to be a Don? When I knew him in early life-he was a near neighbour of mine, in my own palmy `days—and his name was Johnson-Lionel Johnson-I know he once

took the name of Beauclerc, temporarily, for a lark, because letters and enclosures from his hotel landlord were addressed "L. Beauclerc, Esq.," instead of "L. Johnson."

But he was rich and had nothing to do, so he could afford his little vagaries, and time must be filled somehow, or killed. At one time he thought of taking to art (pictorial), having just the head for it, with small, finely cut features, and some of the qualities—a taste for fancy dress and a pocket-Apollo build.

I heard afterwards that Leon-Johnson had married abroad, been caught by a bewitching Spanish girl of excellent reputation, perfect beauty, no education, and no manners to speak of, "at least not presentable manners," said Lady John. "I don't mind it; I like it, indeed; the innocent ways and light laughter of the more childish races, so totally without stays, are quite refreshing."

"My own manners have no repose just now. I sketch and scribble at every snatched moment, so I hope Señora de Leon will like me."

"I do," said Lady John, with her kind, genial smile. "I like to be with people who are natural and easy in their ways; who live their life, and don't try to drive back the present and rush to tomorrow."

Leon said something of the same sort to me, when

we stood chatting in his hall with the French artist, whose hansom drove up just as I rang at the wheel of bells, saved from a ruined convent chapel; and M. Guillemin instantly chimed in, "Who loaf to dance and singk, and to assist at the bull's combat efray Sundi.”

"You won't mind my taking notes?" I asked.

"Oh no; describe away as hard as you like. We don't mind being looked at. We like to be thought pretty."

In Leon's hall was a channelled marble console backed with azulejo tiles. On this stood water-jars of light porous clay, of various antique patterns; smaller vases, fluted at the neck, stood in these and dripped into them; the cooled water again filtered through the larger jars and fell over the marble slab into a large dish standing below, from which the house-dogs lapped. Fresh flowers were stuck through the handles of the jars. The effect of light, coolness, and colour was charming, as seen against a background of dark folding doors, half opening on a bright courtyard full of plants, and covered with a gaily striped awning. A pretty girl, a Spanish attendant and foster-sister of Mrs. Leon, held out a glass of water and some white cake, light as puff, and looking like meringue, and offered us refresh

ment as we entered.

"The house is yours," said Leon; "and Ysidor,