Feuntarrabia is but a stone's throw away, sitting, as it were, desolate and forgotten on its promontory beyond the sands, and as the sun sets, flinging its blood-red radiance over sea and shore, the aspect is all very quiet, very peaceful, and fair. It is difficult to realize the stirring times that once passed over the spot, the war thunder that shook the echoes of the hills. May the bloody scenes of the _Côte d'Argent_ be over for ever, and its future be as happy as King Alfonso's wooing. At Feuntarrabia, but a step beyond Irun, one enters his first typical Spanish town. You know this because touts try to sell you, and every one else, a lottery ticket, and because the beggars, who, apparently, are as numerous as their tribe in Naples, quote proverbs at your head. You may understand them or you may not, but since Spain is the land of proverbs, it is but natural that you should meet with them forthwith. Here is one, though it is more like an enigma; and when translated it becomes but an old friend in disguise:-- "Un manco escribio una carta, Un siega la esta mirando; Un mudo la esta leyenda Y un sordo la esta escuchando." "A handless man a letter did write, A dumb dictated it word for word; The person who read it had lost his sight, And deaf was he who listened and heard." One need not be a phenomenal linguist to understand this, even in the vernacular. Feuntarrabia itself is a cluster of brown-red houses piled high along the narrow streets, with deep eaves over-hanging grated windows, and carved doorways leading to shady courts. There is a certain squalid, gone-to-ruin air about everything, which, in this case, is but a charm; but one can picture from the blazoned stone coats-of-arms seen here and there that the dwellers of olden time were proud and reverend seigneurs. [Illustration: _In Old Feuntarrabia_] Feuntarrabia, the little sea-coast town, called even by the French _la perle de la Bidassoa_ is contrastingly different to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, though not twenty kilometres away. It is Spanish to the core, and on the escutcheon above the city gate one reads an ancient inscription to the effect that it belonged to the kings of Castile and was always "a very noble, very loyal, very brave and always faithful city."