“_Lieber Herr_,” said Benedict, “I will follow you to Santander by short journeys, for I am unable to make long ones amongst these hills; and when I am there, peradventure I may find some means of passing into France. It is a great comfort, in my horrible journeys, to think that I am travelling over the ground which yourself have trodden, and to hope that I am proceeding to rejoin you once more. This hope kept me alive in the _bellotas_, and without it I should never have reached Oviedo. I will quit Spain as soon as possible, and betake me to Lucerne, though it is a hard thing to leave the _Schatz_ behind me in the land of the Gallegans.” Thereupon I presented him with a few dollars. “A strange man is this Benedict,” said Antonio to me next morning, as, accompanied by a guide, we sallied forth from Oviedo; “a strange man, _mon maître_, is this same Benedict. A strange life has he led, and a strange death he will die,—it is written on his countenance. That he will leave Spain I do not believe, or if he leave it, it will be only to return, for he is bewitched about this treasure. Last night he sent for a _sorcière_ whom he consulted in my presence: and she told him that he was doomed to possess it, but that first of all he must cross water. She cautioned him likewise against an enemy, which he supposes must be the canon of Saint James. I have often heard people speak of the avidity of the Swiss for money, and here is a proof of it. I would not undergo what Benedict has suffered in these last journeys of his to possess all the treasures in Spain.” CHAPTER XXXIV. Departure from Oviedo—Villa Viciosa—The Young Man of the Inn—Antonio’s Tale—The General and his Family—Woful Tidings—To-morrow we die—San Vicente—Santander—An Harangue—Flinter the Irishman. So we left Oviedo and directed our course towards Santander. The man who accompanied us as guide, and from whom I hired the pony on which I rode, had been recommended to me by my friend the merchant of Oviedo. He proved, however, a lazy, indolent fellow; he was generally loitering two or three hundred yards in our rear, and instead of enlivening the way with song and tale, like our late guide, Martin of Rivadeo, he scarcely ever opened his lips, save to tell us not to go so fast, or that I should burst his pony if I spurred him so. He was thievish withal, and though he had engaged to make the journey _seco_, {82} that is, to defray the charges of himself and beast, he contrived throughout to keep both at our expense. When journeying in Spain, it is invariably the cheapest plan to agree to maintain the guide and his horse or mule, for by so doing the hire is diminished at least one-third, and the bills upon the road are seldom increased; whereas, in the other case, he pockets the difference, and yet goes shot free, and at the expense of the traveller, through the connivance of the innkeepers, who have a kind of fellow-feeling with the guides.