The railway from Bayonne to Madrid is owned in Paris, and it seems that the directors were paying blackmail to Don Carlos, ostensibly to him, but really to several marauding bands who plundered under the name of fighting for the Don, upon the understanding that the railroad was not to be meddled with. The directors had been paying 100,000 francs a month. As will be easily believed, there was a difficulty in the distribution of the money among so many greedy and inartistic robbers, and the discontented determined to hold up the railroad itself and stop all trains. Unluckily, the train we were on was the one they proposed to experiment on first, and they proposed drastic measures, too--in fact, had blown up or down a short tunnel, and torn up the rails in front of our train. As we crossed the frontier a French gendarme and Spanish civil guard appeared, demanding passports. It was, of course, a sure thing that I had them all right. It is a safeguard under the protection of which the man who has anything to fear slips through the fingers of frontier guards and police, while the honest man quite frequently neglects the necessary formalities and is detained.
Our train crossed the bridge over the Bidassoa and we were on Spanish soil. Soon we entered the gorges of the Pyrenees, and while speculating whether I should awaken my wife to see the magnificent scenery all necessity for awakening any one on that train was over. Three or four musket shots rang out, our train was off the rail, and after a crash or two came to a sudden stop, and then a babel arose, while the train was surrounded by armed men. It was laughable. It seemed like an opera bouffe, the real thing, this motley array of brigands, all trying to maintain under difficulties the grave Spanish exterior.
One monkey of 18 or 19 years, armed, came to our compartment, and, pointing to my chain, said he wanted it and my watch. None of us understood Spanish, but we all comprehended his meaning readily. I refused to make him a gift, and got rid of him easily.
We were all ordered to alight and our captors seemed inclined to be ugly. Myself and party were about the only well-dressed people on the train, and, seeing a priest close by, I went up to him, and ascertaining he could speak French, I began, in very bad French indeed, to threaten with very dire consequences Don Carlos and every band of Carlists who dares to annoy an English Duke and Duchess, and demanded instant shelter and a guard for my wife, the Duchess. We could hardly keep from laughing, it was so very like a melodrama. My wife thoroughly enjoyed the situation, and I should have done so too, had I not had such strong reasons for quick passage through Spain to blue water on the South, for I desired to speedily put some leagues of Neptune's domain between myself and the Old World.