At a newspaper kiosque I bought a copy of the New York Herald and sat in a café to read it.

It felt strange to be in France again. There was a safe, suburban feeling. I wished I had gone up to Paris with Bill, except that Paris would have meant more fiesta-ing.

I was through with fiestas for a while. It would be quiet in San Sebastian.

The season does not open there until August.

I could get a good hotel room and read and swim. There was a fine beach there.

There were wonderful trees along the promenade above the beach, and there were many children sent down with their nurses before the season opened.

In the evening there would be band concerts under the trees across from the Café Marinas.

I could sit in the Marinas and listen.

"How does one eat inside?" I asked the waiter. Inside the café was a restaurant.

"Well. Very well. One eats very well."

I went in and ate dinner. It was a big meal for France but it seemed very carefully apportioned after Spain. I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was a Château Margaux (法，玛歌酒庄).

It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone.

A bottle of wine was good company. Afterward I had coffee.

The waiter recommended a Basque liqueur called Izzarra.

He brought in the bottle and poured a liqueur-glass full.

He said Izzarra was made of the flowers of the Pyrenees.

The veritable flowers of the Pyrenees. It looked like hair-oil and smelled like Italian strega.

I told him to take the flowers of the Pyrenees away and bring me a vieux marc (法，陈年白兰地).

The marc was good. I had a second marc after the coffee.

The waiter seemed a little offended about the flowers of the Pyrenees, so I overtipped him.

That made him happy. It felt comfortable to be in a country where it is so simple to make people happy.

You can never tell whether a Spanish waiter will thank you.

Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France.

It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason.

If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money.

I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me back.

I would dine there again some time and he would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table.

It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis. I was back in France.

Next morning I tipped every one a little too much at the hotel to make more friends, and left on the morning train for San Sebastian.

At the station I did not tip the porter more than I should because I did not think I would ever see him again.

I only wanted a few good French friends in Bayonne to make me welcome in case I should come back there again.

I knew that if they remembered me their friendship would be loyal.

At Irun we had to change trains and show passports. I hated to leave France.

Life was so simple in France. I felt I was a fool to be going back into Spain.

In Spain you could not tell about anything.

I felt like a fool to be going back into it, but I stood in line with my passport, opened my bags for the customs, bought a ticket, went through a gate, climbed onto the train, and after forty minutes and eight tunnels I was at San Sebastian.

Even on a hot day San Sebastian has a certain early-morning quality.

The trees seem as though their leaves were never quite dry.

The streets feel as though they had just been sprinkled.

It is always cool and shady on certain streets on the hottest day.

I went to a hotel in the town where I had stopped before, and they gave me a room with a balcony that opened out above the roofs of the town.

There was a green mountainside beyond the roofs.

I unpacked my bags and stacked my books on the table beside the head of the bed, put out my shaving things, hung up some clothes in the big armoire, and made up a bundle for the laundry.

Then I took a shower in the bathroom and went down to lunch.

Spain had not changed to summer-time, so I was early. I set my watch again.

I had recovered an hour by coming to San Sebastian.

As I went into the dining-room the concierge brought me a police bulletin to fill out.

I signed it and asked him for two telegraph forms, and wrote a message to the Hotel Montoya, telling them to forward all mail and telegrams for me to this address.

I calculated how many days I would be in San Sebastian and then wrote out a wire to the office asking them to hold mail, but forward all wires for me to San Sebastian for six days.

Then I went in and had lunch. After lunch I went up to my room, read a while, and went to sleep.

When I woke it was half past four. I found my swimming-suit, wrapped it with a comb in a towel, and went down-stairs and walked up the street to the Concha.

The tide was about half-way out. The beach was smooth and firm, and the sand yellow.

I went into a bathing-cabin, undressed, put on my suit, and walked across the smooth sand to the sea.

The sand was warm under bare feet. There were quite a few people in the water and on the beach.

Out beyond where the headlands of the Concha almost met to form the harbor there was a white line of breakers and the open sea.

Although the tide was going out, there were a few slow rollers.

They came in like undulations in the water, gathered weight of water, and then broke smoothly on the warm sand. I waded out.

The water was cold. As a roller came I dove, swam out under water, and came to the surface with all the chill gone.

I swam out to the raft, pulled myself up, and lay on the hot planks.

A boy and girl were at the other end. The girl had undone the top strap of her bathing-suit and was browning her back.

The boy lay face downward on the raft and talked to her.

She laughed at things he said, and turned her brown back in the sun. I lay on the raft in the sun until I was dry.

Then I tried several dives. I dove deep once, swimming down to the bottom.

I swam with my eyes open and it was green and dark. The raft made a dark shadow.

I came out of the water beside the raft, pulled up, dove once more, holding it for length, and then swam ashore.

I lay on the beach until I was dry, then went into the bathing-cabin, took off my suit, sloshed myself with fresh water, and rubbed dry.

I walked around the harbor under the trees to the casino, and then up one of the cool streets to the Café Marinas.

There was an orchestra playing inside the café and I sat out on the terrace and enjoyed the fresh coolness in the hot day, and had a glass of lemonjuice and shaved ice and then a long whiskey and soda.

I sat in front of the Marinas for a long time and read and watched the people, and listened to the music.

Later when it began to get dark, I walked around the harbor and out along the promenade, and finally back to the hotel for supper.

There was a bicycle-race on, the Tour du Pays Basque, and the riders were stopping that night in San Sebastian.

In the dining-room, at one side, there was a long table of bicycle-riders, eating with their trainers and managers.

They were all French and Belgians, and paid close attention to their meal, but they were having a good time.

At the head of the table were two good-looking French girls, with much Rue du Faubourg Montmartre chic.

I could not make out whom they belonged to.

They all spoke in slang at the long table and there were many private jokes and some jokes at the far end that were not repeated when the girls asked to hear them.

The next morning at five o'clock the race resumed with the last lap, San Sebastian-Bilbao.

The bicycle-riders drank much wine, and were burned and browned by the sun.

They did not take the race seriously except among themselves.

They had raced among themselves so often that it did not make much difference who won.

Especially in a foreign country. The money could be arranged.

The man who had a matter of two minutes lead in the race had an attack of boils, which were very painful.

He sat on the small of his back. His neck was very red and the blond hairs were sunburned.

The other riders joked him about his boils. He tapped on the table with his fork.

"Listen," he said, "to-morrow my nose is so tight on the handlebars that the only thing touches those boils is a lovely breeze."

One of the girls looked at him down the table, and he grinned and turned red.

The Spaniards, they said, did not know how to pedal.