"They will lead you away from the loveliest
scene in their land, to point out some curiosity, more to their taste;
some miraculous image, some saintly relic brought by angels from the
Holy Land, or, perhaps, some local natural phenomenon, which has a
dash of the wonderful about it. For instance, when at Braga, three
years ago, with my hands full of business, and anxious at the same
time to learn all I could of the country around, my Portuguese
companion compelled me to waste a precious hour in visiting a famous
spring in the garden of a convent of St. Augustine. The water, you
must know, is intensely cold, and if a bottle of wine be immersed in
it, it is instantly turned into vinegar."
"Did you see that?" asked Lady Mabel.
"When I called for a bottle of wine, the good fathers told me they had
given all they had to a detachment of Portuguese troops that marched
by the day before--a charity more wondrous than the virtue of the
spring."
"Yet it is a pity you could not test the virtues of this wonderful
spring," said she.
"Not more wonderful," said L'Isle, "than the fountain in the village
of Friexada. Its water, too, is excessively cold, and of so hungry a
nature, that in less than an hour it consumes a joint of meat, leaving
the bones quite bare.
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