But a terrible sense of loneliness possessed Elsworth. The day after his arrival here it was Sunday. The wind was bitterly cold. His Spanish was not quite Castilian in its perfection, though he could make himself understood; and when he had spent some hours in the cathedral, visited what a young fruit-seller called the Mercado de la Llendre, which is not quite literally rendered as Rag Fair, and wandered round and round the quaint old market-place half a dozen times, his questioning spirit disturbed him as to why he had ever left London, and how was a nineteenth-century life to be supported long under such conditions? St. Simeon Stylites, on the top of his pillar, must have had some such misgivings for the first few days at least, and St. Francis could not have found all at once the birds and the fishes supply the place of familiar friends, nor their sentiments, if they expressed any, a sufficient substitute for his human interests of former days. The dinner table did not mend matters. The company at the hotel consisted of some half a dozen priests, as many young officers of the army from the barracks opposite, and some of the towns-people, who evidently were quite at home in their surroundings and particularly provincial in their breeding. No one took the least notice of him, and his attempts at conversation, like sparks of damp wood, went out dismally. The truth was, the Castilians had paid for a good Sunday dinner, and the matter of making the most of it was of too serious importance to every one of them to permit of their being beguiled in their work by any such trivial considerations as the young Englishman’s conversation could offer. So everybody ate as became good hearty Burgolese, and poor Elsworth was left to his meditations.