"A senseless restriction indeed," replied our new friend, "and we all feel it so; but until some disappointed visitor of consequence appeals to the Queen or the Madrid Government, the thing will go on. There is absolutely no reason why all the world should not be admitted."
At this moment the musicians finished up with a crash. The sound was horrible. H. C. made an excruciating grimace and our captain shook with laughter.
"_I_ do not," he returned, "because I have spent much time in Paris, where barbaric music would not be tolerated. But these frantic discords just please the people of Lerida, who have not been educated to anything better. It is over for the night, and now everyone will depart. They have drunk their coffee or wine or spirit, sat a whole evening in a clouded, heated atmosphere, listening enraptured to the strains which have set you quivering, and are going home feeling that if this or paradise were offered to them they would not hesitate to reject paradise. Such is their life."
"I am sorry that I can be of no use to you," said our polite captain; "but if you are leaving Lerida to-morrow, time certainly runs short. I can, however, give you my card, and place myself and all I have at your disposal. If ever you visit Lerida again, and I am quartered here, I hope you will find me out. I will at least promise you a pass into the fortress; and there are a few things you would not be likely to see without the open sesame of one of ourselves."
Upon which he shook hands, gave us a military salute, "wrapped his martial cloak about him," and passed out into the night.
We listened to his quick receding footsteps and then turned away. The silence was only broken by the distant cry of a watchman proclaiming the hour and the weather. "El Sereno," as we called the old guardians of the darkness in Majorca, where many a time we wandered with them in the dead of night amidst the old palaces and watched them light up the wonderful old Moorish remains with their swinging lanterns.
It was a very dark night, though the stars flashed overhead. We found ourselves on the empty market-place, where trees whispered together. In the morning, when fruit and flowers and a hundred stalls and a crowd of noisy people called for all one's attention, the whispering trees were neglected. Now it was their hour, and they told each other their mighty secrets, and one felt that they were wiser and greater than mankind in its little brief authority. We stood and listened, but they talked in an unknown tongue. Almost as mysterious and full of meaning seemed the outlines of the gabled houses on the hill slopes crowned by that splendid semi-religious fortress, the tall tower cleaving the sky.