The industrious Catalans were already awake and stirring. Smokes from domestic hearths warmed the cool morning air; cheerful noises of men, animals, and fowls broke the silence; doors were open as we entered the town, and the women were combing and twisting their black hair in the shadows within. At the post some brown grooms lounged about the door. A priest passed,--a genuine Don Basilio, in inky gown and shovel-hat; and these graceless grooms looked after him, thrust their tongues into their cheeks, and made an irreverent grimace. The agent at Perpignan came into my mind; I winked at the fellows, without any clear idea wherefore, but it must have expressed something, for they burst into a laugh and repeated the grimace.
The lower town seemed to be of immense length. Once out of it, a superb avenue of plane-trees received us, at the end of which was the railway-station. In another hour the train would leave for Barcelona. Our trunks must be again examined. When I asked the reason why this annoying regulation, obsolete elsewhere in Europe, is here retained, the Spaniards gravely informed me that, if it were abolished, a great many people would be thrown out of employment. Not that they get much pay for the examination,--but they are constantly bribed not to examine! There was a _café_ attached to the station, and I advised my fellow-passengers to take a cup of the delicious ropy chocolate of Spain, after which one accepts the inevitable more patiently.
I found the landscapes from Giron to Barcelona very bright and beautiful. Our locomotive had fallen into the national habit: it was stately and deliberate, it could not be hurried, its very whistle was subdued and dignified. We went forward at an easy pace, making about fifteen miles an hour, which enabled me to notice the patient industry of the people, as manifested on every plain and hillside. The Catalans are called rough and ungraceful; beside the sprightly Andalusians they seem cold and repellent; they have less of that blue blood which makes the beggar as proud as the grandee, but they possess the virtue of labor, which, however our artistic tastes may undervalue it, is the basis from which all good must spring. When I saw how the red and rocky hills were turned into garden-terraces, how the olive-trees were pruned into health and productiveness, how the wheat stood so thick that it rolled but stiffly under the breeze, I forgot the jaunty _majos_ of Seville, and gave my hearty admiration to the strong-backed reapers in the fields of Catalonia.