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Updated: June 20, 2025
Rounding the Islet, and accompanied by curious canoes like paper-boats, and by fishing-craft which bounded over the waves like dolphins, we spun by the Puerto de la Luz, a line of flat-topped whitewashed houses, the only remarkable feature being the large and unused Lazaretto. A few barques still lie off the landing-place, where I have been compelled more than once to take refuge.
They came down in numbers in front of my hotel at nine o'clock on the morning of Monday, July 28th, a few days after my arrival, when a strange yellow funnel turned the point, and a long low Red-Roverish three-masted schooner-yacht steamed into Socoa, the roadstead of St. Jean de Luz.
I transferred my bill of exchange for eight thousand francs to a Madrid house, and crossed the Landes, passing by Mont de Marsan, Bayonne, and St. Jean de Luz, where I sold my post-chaise. From St. Jean de Luz I went to Pampeluna by way of the Pyrenees, which I crossed on mule-back, my baggage being carried by another mule. The mountains struck me as higher than the Alps.
The stone which had itself been a Beth-el wherein the Deity had his home, passed by degrees into the altar of the god whose actual dwelling-place was in heaven. The Canaanitish city near which Jacob had raised the monument of his dream bore the name of Luz.
He is really a relic of the secret lodge orders that overran Europe with religious disorders and fanatic practices in the Twelfth Century. Except for the Lenten processions, rites are practiced at night. There are the Brothers of the Light La Luz and the Brothers of the Darkness Las Tinieblas.
Now he had taken another ticket. His bag was being registered for St. Jean de Luz. A long journey lay before him. He yawned violently, half remembering that he had passed two nights without sleep. Then he found himself seated in a corner of the railway carriage, an unknown landscape slipping away before his eyes. Now for the first time did he seem to be really aware of what he was doing.
He was a violent doctrinaire Carlist, but suffered from a chronic malady which prevented him from taking the field; still there was none who could plot with a more tremendous air of mystery. He was a Carlist because it was "the correct thing" to be one in the fashionable ring at St. Jean de Luz, where he had settled, and because he inherited a name associated with chivalric insurrection.
The palace guards informed King Philip, who adopted the child and brought it up, since it had been foisted upon him as his daughter. He grew fond of the girl, and on coming to Saint Jean de Luz to marry the Infanta to his nephew the King, he made them a present of Philippa, and begged them both to be very good to her. In this amiable Spanish girl, the Infanta recognised a sister.
I met some of them later, but so far know no more than two words of their language. The wind was cool at St Jean de Luz, but the sun was bright and the sea thundered on the beach and the battered breakwaters. To the east and south are the Pyrenees lower summits, it is true, but bold and fine in outline.
The first was fought in the early part of November, and resulted in the occupation by Wellington's army of the great mountain-barrier south of Bayonne, with six miles of entrenchments along the Nivelle, and of the port of St. Jean de Luz.
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