We found the place sufficiently civilised to possess an omnibus, which transported us bag and baggage to the hotel. The long straight thoroughfare in which we found ourselves looked in the darkening night like the fag end of a village, unfinished and unpaved; almost like the street of some far away colonial settlement. It was wide and lined with trees, and beyond the trees on one side, a row of large houses; amongst them our inn; a rambling, cheerless sort of building, too new to be peopled with ghosts or distinguished by artistic outlines. Anything more opposite to the ghostly element could not be imagined. Still, in spite of frightful drawbacks it was some degrees better than Manresa.
We were conducted by a curious but amiable duenna to a large lofty sitting room with a bedroom opening on each side: evidently the state apartments. The place looked empty and neglected, and our candles hardly lighted the obscurity. The electric bells were all broken, and we soon found that if we rang till doomsday no one appeared.
Our duenna was toothless and apparently voiceless, for when she opened her capacious mouth and began to talk, no sound came forth. The mouth worked up and down in absolute silence, and the effect was creepy and peculiar. It almost felt as though a mummy had been galvanised into life minus the voice. Her costume had nothing redeeming about it. An impromptu turban placed over a shock head of hair, petticoats of the shortest, revealing feet and ankles that would have supported a substantial Dutch vrouw. We afterwards found she was the laundress of the establishment, and this was the costume in which she presided at the wash-tub. She smiled sweetly upon H. C. and her face looked like a huge, amiable cavern. With an imagination full of the lovely face of that young novice in Manresa, he shuddered, dropped into the furthest chair, and begged us to complete the arrangements without him.
There was nothing to arrange, and the Dragon soon withdrew with her cavernous smiles and voiceless words. Then from a distant corner we heard an anxious murmur: "What about dinner?" H. C.. had not expired; the Dragon had evidently not frightened away all earthly desires.
Fortunately dinner was forthcoming, though when we had finally settled down and removed the stains of travel, and H. C. had recovered his nerves, the night was growing apace. We plunged into wide passages, and after half a dozen wrong turnings at length found ourselves in the dining-room, large, lofty and well lighted. The chef sent up a civilised bill of fare, and the landlord himself waited upon us; whilst under the influence of fortifying dishes and refined wines the charms of the Manresa novice faded into the background, and H. C. felt almost equal to challenging the Lerida Dragon to single combat as a libel upon her sex. We were conducted back to our rooms by quite a procession, including the thin landlord and imposing landlady, headed by the Dragon bearing a flambeau.