Ranks upon ranks of rastaquoÈres, Brazilians, Roumanians, Russians, Bulgarians, with battalions of Americans, all seated round the “piazza” of the Grand Hotel. Ladies from Boston, Chicago, and New York, their heels too high, their petticoats too much belaced, their Empire combs bediamonded so as to look almost like cut-glass chandeliers, as in their chairs they sat and read the latest news from Tampa, Santiago, and how Cervera’s Squadron met the fate which they (the ladies) reckoned God prepares for those who dare to fight against superior odds.

Outside upon the boulevards, cocottes, guides, cabmen, and androgynous young men, touts, and all those who hang about that caravansary where the dulcet Suffolk whine, made sharper by the air of Massachusetts, sounds, passed and repassed.

Smug-faced, black-coated citizens from Buffalo and Albany, and from places like Detroit and Council Bluffs, to which the breath of fashion has not penetrated, scanned the New York Herald, read the glorious news, and, taking off their hats, deigned publicly to recognize the existence of a God, and after standing reverently silent, masticating their green cigars in contemplation of His wondrous ways, to take a drink.

Aquatic plants and ferns known only to hotels, and constituting a sub-family of plants, which by the survival of the ugliest have come at last to stand gas, dust, saliva, and an air befogged with Chypre, grew in the fountain where, in the tepid water, gold fish with swollen eyes, and blotched with patches of unhealthy white, swam to and fro, picking up crumbs and rising to the surface when some one threw a smoked-out cigarette into the basin, in the midst of which a fig-leaved Naiad held a stucco shell.

The corridors were blocked with Saratoga trunks; perspiring porters staggered to and fro, bending beneath the weight of burdens compared to which a sailor’s chest is as a pill-box.

All went well; the tapes clicked off their international lies, detailing all the last quotations of the deep mines upon the Rand, the fall in Spanish Fours; in fact, brought home to those with eyes to see, the way in which the Stock Exchange had put a rascals’ ring around the globe.

Waiters ran to and fro, their ears attuned to every outrage upon French, seeking to find the meaning of the jargons in which they were addressed.

Majestic butlers in black knee-breeches, and girt about the neck with great brass chains, moved slowly up and down, so grave and so respectable that had you laid your hands upon any one of them and made a bishop of him he would have graced the post.

Mysterious, well-dressed men sat down beside you, and after a few words proposed to take you in the evening to show you something new.

Women walked to and fro, glaring at one another as they had all been tigresses, or again, catching each other’s eyes, reddened, and looked ashamed, as if aware, though strangers, that they understood the workings of the other’s heart.

Burano chandeliers and modern tapestry, with red brocade on the two well-upholstered chairs, imparted beauty and a look of wealth, making one feel as if by striking an electric bell a door would open and a troop of half-dressed women file into the court, after the fashion of another kind of inn.

Outside the courtyard Paris roared, chattered, and yelped, cycles and automobiles made the poor piÉton’s life a misery, and set one thinking how inferior after all the Mind which thought out Eden was to our own.

Upon the asphalt the horizontales lounged along, pushing against the likely-looking passer-by like cats against a chair.

Cabs rattled, and the whole clinquant town wore its best air of unreality, which it puts off alone upon the morning of a revolution.

Through boulevards, parvis, citÉs, along the quays, in the vast open spaces which, like Saharas of grey stone, make the town desolate, in cafÉs, brothels, theatres, in church and studio, and wherever men most congregate, groups stood about reading the news, gesticulating, weeping, perspiring, and agog with a half-impotent enthusiastic orgasm of wildest admiration for Spain, Cervera, and the men who without bunkum or illusion steamed to certain death. And, curiously enough, the execration fell not so much upon Chicago as on “ces cochons d’Anglais,” who by their base connivance had wrought the ruin of the Spanish cause.

Yankees themselves read and remarked with sneers that England’s turn was coming next, and after “Kewby,” that they reckoned to drag the British flag through every dunghill in New York; then one winked furtively and said, “We need them now, but afterwards we’ll show Victoria in a cage for a picayune a peep, and teach the Britishers what to do with their old Union Jack,” thinking no doubt of the ten-cent paper which is sold in every city of the States, stamped with the Spanish flag.

And as I sat, musing on things and others—thinking, for instance, that when you scratch a man and see his blood you know his nature by the way he bears his wound, and that the Spaniards, wounded to the death, were dying game (after the fashion of the English in times gone by, before Imperialism, before the Nonconformist snuffle, the sweating system, and the rest had changed our nature), and that the Yankees at the first touch cried out like curs, though they had money, numbers, and everything upon their side—I fell a-thinking on the Spain of old. Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, el Gran Capitan, Cortes (not at the siege of Mexico, but in the rout before Algiers) came up before me, and I thought on the long warfare, extending over seven hundred years, by which Spain saved the southern half of Europe from the Moors; upon Gerona, Zaragoza, and, most of all, upon Cervera, last of the Quixotes, Vara de Rey, Linares, and the poor peasants from Galician hills, thyme-scented wastes in Lower Aragon, Asturian mountains, and Estremenian oak-woods, who, battling against superior numbers, short of food, of ammunition, and bereft of hope, were proving their descent from the grim soldiers of the Spanish “Tercios” of the Middle Ages, and making the invaders of their country pay for their piracy in blood.

Blood is the conqueror’s coin the whole world over, and if the island which Columbus found for Spain pass into other hands, let those who take it pour out their blood like water to inaugurate their reign of peace.

Where the connection between the senses and the brain comes in, which influences first, and how, or whether a wise Providence, always upon His guard (after the fashion of an operator in a Punch and Judy show), influences each man directly, as by celestial thought suggestion, I cannot tell.

All that I know is, that once walking on the rampart gardens which in Cadiz overhang the sea and form the outside rim of the “Taza de Plata,” as the Spaniards call the town, I on a sudden saw the River Plate. The Gauchos, plains, wild horses, the stony wastes, the ostriches (the “Alegria del Desierto”), came up before me, and in especial a certain pass over a little river called the Gualiyan; the sandy dip, the metallic-looking trees, the greenish river with the flamingoes and white herons and the black-headed swans; the vultures sitting motionless on the dead trees, and most of all the penetrating scent of the mimosa, known to the natives as the “espinillo de olor.”

Turning and wondering why, I saw a stunted tree with yellow blossoms duly ticketed with its description “Mimosa” this or that, and with its “habitat” the warmer district of the River Plate.

I leave these things to wise philosophers and to those men of science who seem to think mankind is worth the martyrdom of living dogs and cats; or who, maybe, drag out the entrails of their quivering fellow-mortals merely to stimulate their senses or erotic powers.

But the “dwawm” over, looking about, fenced in by swarms of overjoyed Americans, all talking shrilly, reading out the news, exultant at the triumph of their fleet, puffed up and arrogant as only the descendants of the Puritans can be, I saw a Spaniard sitting with his daughter, a girl about nineteen.

Himself a Castellano rancio, silent and grave, dressed all in black, moustache waxed to a point, square little feet like boxes, brown little hands, face like mahogany, hair cropped close, and with the unillusional fatalistic air of worldly wisdom mixed with simplicity which characterizes Spaniards of the older school.

Being a Christian, he spoke no tongue but that which Christians use, was proud of it, proud of his ignorance, proud (I have no doubt) of his descent.

No doubt he saw everything through the clear dazzling atmosphere of old Castille, which Spaniards of his kind seem to condense and carry off with them for use in other climes.

Seeing so clearly, he saw nothing clear, for the intelligence of man is so contrived as to be ineffective if a mist of some sort is not interposed.

The daughter fair, fair with the fairness of a Southern, blue-eyed, and skin like biscuit china, hands and feet fine, head well set on, and yet with the decided gestures and incisive speech, the “aire recio,” and the “meneo” of the hips in walking, of the women of her race.

They sat some time before a pile of newspapers, the father smoking gravely, taking down the smoke as he were drinking it, and then in a few minutes breathing it out to serve as an embellishment to what he said, holding his cigarette meanwhile fixed in a little silver instrument contrived like two clasped hands.

The Spanish newspapers were, of course, all without news, or said they had none, and as the daughter read, the old man punctuated with “Valiente,” “Pobrecitas,” and the like, when he heard how before El Caney, Vara de Rey had died, or how the Americans had shot the three Sisters of the Poor whose bodies were found lying with lint and medicine in their hands.

“Read me the papers of the Americans, hija de mi corazon,” and she began, translating as she read.

Reading of the whole agony, choking but self-possessed, she read: the Vizcaya, Almirante Oquendo, and the rest; the death of Villamil, he who at least redeemed the promise made to the Mother of his God in Cadiz before he put to sea.

And as she read the old man gave no sign, sitting impassive as a fakir, or like an Indian warrior at the stake.

She went on reading; the fleet steamed through the hell of shot and shell, took fire, was beached, blew up, and still he gave no sign.

Cervera steps on board the conqueror’s ship, weeping, gives up his sword, and the old man sat still.

When all was finished, and the last vessel burning on the rocks, slowly the tears fell down his old brown cheeks, and he broke silence. “Virgen de Guadalupe, has not one escaped?” and the girl, looking at him through her now misty eyes, “No, papa, God has so willed it. . . . What is wrong with your moustache?”

Then, with an effort, he took down his grief, said quietly, “I must change my hairdresser,” got up, and offering his daughter his arm, walked out impassible, through the thick ranks of the defeated foe.