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The sombre air and the silence of these spectators contrasted with the gay and anxious looks of the girls, and their childish exclamations. "Ah, the fine procession!" they cried; "there are at least five hundred men with cuirasses and red uniforms, upon fine horses. They've got yellow feathers in their large hats." "They are strangers Catalonians," said a French guard.
On the west, Barcelona began to dispute the preeminence of Venice in the Mediterranean, and Spanish salt was brought to Italy itself and sold by the enterprising Catalonians. Their corsairs vexed Venetian commerce everywhere; and in that day, as in our own, private English enterprise was employed in piratical depredations on the traffic of a friendly power.
"Since my star has not granted me that from my lady happiness should fall to me, since no pleasure that I can give pleases her and I have no power to forget her, I must needs enter upon the road of true love and I can learn it well enough in gay Catalonia among the Catalonians, men of worth, and their kindly ladies.
But he was not equally successful in winning the attachment of those with whom he acted. He was adored by the Catalonians and Valencians; but he was hated by the prince whom he had all but made a great king, and by the generals whose fortune and reputation were staked on the same venture with his own. The English Government could not understand him.
As soon as peace was restored in Syria, Bursbai turned his attention to the European pirates, who had long been harassing the coasts of Syria and Egypt. They were partly Cypriots and partly Catalonians and Genoese, who started from Cyprus and landed their booty on this island. Bursbai resolved first to conquer this island.
The Valencians, in particular, were treated by the Catalonians as a light, trifling, inconsistent people. They were in the habit of saying to me, "En el reino de Valencia la carne es verdura, la verdura agua, los hombres mugeres, las mugeres nada"; which may be translated thus: "In the kingdom of Valencia meat is a vegetable, vegetables are water, men are women, and women nothing."
"There are the old Catalonians, whose features are of savage strength under the thick brush of white hair falling about their leather-colored faces; the men of Navarre, with braided hair and other evidences of primitiveness vigorous of build and handsome of feature, but withal a little subnormal in expression.
The inhabitants of these three provinces detested each other cordially, and nothing less than the bond of a common hatred was necessary to make them act simultaneously against France. Such was their animosity in 1807 that I could scarcely make use at the same time of Catalonians, Aragons, and Valencians, when I moved with my instruments from one station to another.
"The Catalonians are more disposed toward France than toward Portugal, and there is still time to deprive the King of-the Duke of Portugal, I should say of this protectorship." "What! I assist rebels! You dare " "Such was the intention of his Eminence," continued the Secretary of State.
"It is that which is behind it. This" he laid his hand on the page "is my own country, the north and east of Spain, the wildest part of the Peninsula, the home of the Catalonians, who have always been the leaders in strife and warfare. It is the country from whence my family has its source. All that is written about Catalonia or the Baleares must necessarily refer in part to me and mine.
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