The “_ventorrillo_” is a lower class of _venta_--for there is a deeper bathos; it is the German _kneipe_ or hedge ale-house, and is often nothing more than a mere hut, run up with reeds or branches of trees by the road-side, at which water, bad wine, and brandy, “_aguardiente_,” tooth-water, are to be sold. The latter is always detestable, raw, and disflavoured with aniseed, and turns white in water like Eau de Cologne, not that the natives ever expose it to such a trial. These “_ventorillos_” are at best suspicious places, and the haunts of the spies of regular robbers, or of skulking footpads when there are any, who lurk inside with the proprietress; she herself generally might sit as a model for Hecate, or for one of the witches in Shakspere over their cauldron; her attendant imps are, however, sufficiently interesting personages to form a chapter by themselves. [Sidenote: SPANISH ROBBERS.] CHAPTER XVI. Spanish Robbers--A Robber Adventure--Guardias Civiles--Exaggerated Accounts--Cross of the Murdered--Idle Robber Tales--French Bandittiphobia--Robber History--Guerrilleros--Smugglers--Jose Maria--Robbers of the First Class--The Ratero--Miguelites--Escorts and Escopeteros--Passes, Protections, and Talismans--Execution of a Robber. An _olla_ without bacon would scarcely be less insipid than a volume on Spain without banditti; the stimulant is not less necessary for the established taste of the home-market, than brandy is for pale sherries neat as imported. In the mean time, while the timid hesitate to put their heads into this supposed den of thieves as much as into a house that is haunted, those who are not scared by shadows, and do not share in the fears of cockney critics and delicate writers in satin-paper albums, but adventure boldly into the hornet’s nest, come back in a firm belief of the non-existence of the robber genus. In Spain, that _pays de l’imprévu_, this unexpected absence of personages who render roads uncomfortable, is one of the many and not disagreeable surprises, which await those who prefer to judge of a country by going there themselves, rather than to put implicit faith in the foregone conclusions and stereotyped prejudices of those who have not, although they do sit in judgment on those who have, and decide “without a view.” This very summer, some dozen and more friends of ours have made tours in various parts of the Peninsula, driving and riding unarmed and unescorted through localities of former suspicion, without having the good luck of meeting even with the ghost of a departed robber; in truth and fact, we cannot but remember that such things as monks and banditti were, although they must be spoken of rather in the past than in the present tense. [Sidenote: A ROBBER ADVENTURE.]