To return to the Mayor of Cork. His death was the signal for a typical demonstration in Barcelona, in favour of the Sinn Fein and of the Irish Republic. England was far enough away to remain undisturbed. The English Consul was at hand. When we reached his house we found that all his window-glass had been smashed in sympathy for Irish freedom.
At a first glance Barcelona does not seem to be a Spanish town. There is something Germanic about it. Sitting in the main square and watching the people pass by, one could well imagine oneself in some town on the German border of Alsace.
We remained in Barcelona two days, recovering from the fatigues of the journey. On our last afternoon, as we were strolling through a narrow back street, our attention was caught by a window full of small figures, baked in clay, highly coloured and gilt. The figures were all those of saints and biblical characters, not depicted in the formal manner of religious moments, but in a familiar and homelike way. We went into the small shop and asked their purpose, and were told that these figures were for Christmas decorations. We bought two--one of the Blessed Virgin hanging on a line a chemise which she had just washed, the other an incognita lady saint with a distaff and a cat.
We had taken up our quarters at a small, disreputable lodging-house opposite the station, where they charged us the exorbitant fee of two pesetas a night each. (We suspect that the real price was one peseta). The night-watchman got us out of bed at three o'clock, as our train left at half-past four in the morning, and the preliminaries to Spanish travelling are complicated.
To our surprise we found but a small queue of people waiting at the ticket-office. Our immediate neighbour was a shabby man in a bowler hat from beneath which showed the curly black hair of an Italian. He was accompanied by a middle-aged bustling bourgeois. The bourgeois took a ticket, which he handed to the Italian. We then demanded tickets to the French frontier at Cerbere.
"We cannot book you to Cerbere," said the clerk; "the railway bridge between Figueras and Port Bou has been damaged. It will not be passable for three days."
We thought drearily of having to return to the lodging-house, of three days more in this large, transportless town of Barcelona, of again getting up at three a.m.