who has been travelling for hours in the storm, and then she asked very
humbly if our excellencies will permit her to lay him a bed in our room
when we have done with it, as she can bestow him nowhere else (the
muleteers filling her house to the very cock loft), and has not the
heart to send him on to St. Denys in this pitiless driving rain. To this
Don Sanchez replies, that a Spanish gentleman is welcome to all we can
offer him, and therewith sends down a mighty civil message, begging his
company at our table.

Moll has just time to whip on a piece of finery, and we to put on our
best manners, when the landlady returns, followed by a stout, robust
Spaniard, in an old coat several times too small for him, whom she
introduced as Señor Don Lopez de Calvados.

Don Lopez makes us a reverence, and then, with his shoulders up to his
ears and like gestures, gives us an harangue at some length, but this
being in Spanish, is as heathen Greek to our ears. However, Don Sanchez
explains that our visitor is excusing his appearance as being forced to
change his wet clothes for what the innkeeper can lend him, and so we,
grinning to express our amiability, all sit down to table and set
to--Moll with her most finicking, delicate airs and graces, and Dawson
and I silent as frogs, with understanding nothing of the Dons'
conversation. This, we learn from Don Sanchez after supper, has turned
chiefly on the best means of crossing into Spain, from which it appears
there are two passes through the mountains, both leading to the same
town, but one more circuitous than the other. Don Lopez has come by the
latter, because the former is used by the muleteers, who are not always
the most pleasant companions one can have in a dangerous road; and for
this reason he recommends us to take his way, especially as we have a
young lady with us, which will be the more practicable, as the same