Chapter XV—z^PRIL 

 Departure 



" Absence makes the heart grow fonder ; 

 Isle of Beauty, fare thee well ! " 



T. H. Bayley. 



THE winter has passed without any 

 of the excursions and alarms which 

 have provided excitement in former 

 years. Plagues and rumours of 

 plagues have been happily absent ; and after 

 the terrible catastrophe of the Franco regime 

 last February, Portuguese politics have only 

 reached the simmering point of a ministerial 

 crisis, and have left us cold. All fears of 

 German aggression, whether they were well- 

 founded or baseless, seem to have been dis- 

 pelled for the time, and the absurd buildings 

 which the German company erected stand 

 tenantless as a monument of folly, or worse. 

 And it is noticeable that the number of German 

 visitors is far smaller than in the palmy days 

 of the German bubble, a fact not regretted by 



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