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Updated: May 27, 2025
We at first took it for granted that it was an attack by bandits, but, on getting out and approaching the other coach, found that one of the postilions, a beautiful Italian boy of sixteen, in jaunty costume, had been thrown from his horse, had been run over by the wheels of the coach, and now lay at the roadside gasping his last.
But how great was the impression which they did make on those who witnessed them may be seen in the unanimity with which the chroniclers of the time record her forbidding her postilions to drive over a field of corn which lay between her and the stag, because she would rather miss the sight of the chase than injure the farmer; and relate how, on one occasion, she gave up riding for a week or two, and sent her horses back from Compiègne to Versailles, because the wife of her head-groom was on the point of her confinement, and she wished her to have her husband near her at such a moment; and on another, when the horse of one of her attendants kicked her, and inflicted a severe bruise on her foot, she abstained from mentioning the hurt, lest it should bring the rider into disgrace by being attributed to his awkward management.
We drove on until ten o'clock in the brilliant moonlight and mild, delicious air for the temperature had actually risen to 25° above zero! before a break in the hills announced the junction of the two rivers. There was a large house on the top of a hill on our left, and, to our great joy, the postilions drove directly up to it. "Is this Kengis?"
The outriders and postilions were about to execute this maneuver when the grand equerry also put his head out of the door and exclaimed, "Keep to a trot, the first man who gallops I will dismiss on arriving." It was well known that he would keep his word, so no one dared to pass, and his carriage continued to regulate the pace of the others.
At last the postilions began to draw bridle, and at a slight angle, the moon shining full upon them, we wheeled into a wide semicircle formed by the receding park-walls, and halted before a great fantastic iron gate, and a pair of tall fluted piers, of white stone, all grass-grown and ivy-bound, with great cornices, surmounted with shields and supporters, the Ruthyn bearings washed by the rains of Derbyshire for many a generation of Ruthyns, almost smooth by this time, and looking bleached and phantasmal, like giant sentinels, with each a hand clasped in his comrade's, to bar our passage to the enchanted castle the florid tracery of the iron gate showing like the draperies of white robes hanging from their extended arms to the earth.
The English and American custom of taking a wedding journey immediately after the ceremony is not common in Spain, and the Spaniards, in their conversation and sometimes in their books, are not slow to express their opinions with regard to the matter, insisting that it is much preferable to remain at home among friends than to "expose themselves to the jeers of postilions and stable boys," to quote a line from Fernan Caballero's Clemencia.
"At the very least," the surgeon replied; "but let that willow twig alone, or you will weary your wrist, and then you will not fire steadily. You might kill your man instead of wounding him." The noise of a carriage was heard approaching. "Here he is," said the seconds, who soon descried a caleche coming along the road; it was drawn by four horses, and there were two postilions.
Sometimes we bivouacked at night in a wild mountain gorge and lighted up the snow-laden forest with the red glare of a mighty camp-fire; sometimes we shovelled the drifted snow out of one of the empty yurts, or earth-covered cabins, built by the government along the route to shelter its postilions, and took refuge therein from a howling blizzard.
We had no coachman, but two postilions in short scarlet jackets and leather breeches with top-boots, each astride of a horse; so that, all the way along, when not otherwise attracted, we had the interesting spectacle of their up-and-down bobbing in the saddle.
The postilions, with their clubbed and powdered hair and gaily beribboned hats, started at a fairly steady pace, but once they were clear of the crowd they went off at full tear, with loose reins and a great cracking of whips. The pace was so severe that it was as much as I could do, with my horse at full gallop, to keep my place beside the carriage door.
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