CHAPTER II.
The street in which Mr.Blunt lived presented itself to our eyes, narrow, silent, empty, and dark, but with enough gas-lamps in it to disclose its most striking feature: a quantity of flag-poles sticking out above many of its closed portals.

It was the street of Consuls and I remarked to Mr.Blunt that coming out in the morning he could survey the flags of all nations almost--except his own.

(The U.S.consulate was on the other side of the town.) He mumbled through his teeth that he took good care to keep clear of his own consulate.
"Are you afraid of the consul's dog ?" I asked jocularly.

The consul's dog weighed about a pound and a half and was known to the whole town as exhibited on the consular fore-arm in all places, at all hours, but mainly at the hour of the fashionable promenade on the Prado.
But I felt my jest misplaced when Mills growled low in my ear: "They are all Yankees there." I murmured a confused "Of course." Books are nothing.

I discovered that I had never been aware before that the Civil War in America was not printed matter but a fact only about ten years old.