He accordingly took his seat at some little distance from us, and
began to eat slowly, and with a sobriety and decorum that would have
become a hidalgo. There was altogether a measured manner and a quiet
self-possession about the old man, that made me think that he had seen
better days; his language too, though simple, had occasionally
something picturesque and almost poetical in the phraseology. I set
him down for some broken-down cavalier. I was mistaken; it was nothing
but the innate courtesy of a Spaniard, and the poetical turn of
thought and language often to be found in the lowest classes of this
clear-witted people. For fifty years, he told us, he had been a
shepherd, but now he was out of employ and destitute. "When I was a
young man," said he, "nothing could harm or trouble me; I was always
well, always gay; but now I am seventy-nine years of age, and a
beggar, and my heart begins to fail me."
Still he was not a regular mendicant: it was not until recently that
want had driven him to this degradation; and he gave a touching
picture of the struggle between hunger and pride, when abject
destitution first came upon him. He was returning from Malaga
without money; he had not tasted food for some time, and was
crossing one of the great plains of Spain, where there were but few
habitations. When almost dead with hunger, he applied at the door of a
venta or country inn.
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