THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



289 



tion, seemed to be an asseveration in 

 Catalan that I had long been favorably 

 known to him as a resident of Puigcerda. 

 The host of the Hotel Europe enlisted 

 the carrier in the stratagem and drilled 

 him in the story he was to tell. I was to 

 say no word, for my pitiful incapacity 

 in all tongues known in the Pyrenees 

 would have betrayed me at once. 



"The carrier will say what is necessarv 

 if the soldiers stop you/' said the hotel 

 keeper. "At the worst, you will only be 

 inconvenienced for a few days." 



A SPANISH TOWN INSIDE THE FRENCH 

 FRONTIER 



The chances of arrest seemed excel- 

 lent, but they also seemed worth taking ; 

 for there is but one Llivia. Away back 

 in the seventeenth century Spain paid 

 for an unwise war with France by ceding 

 33 villages and the territory surrounding 

 them to the stronger power. But after 

 the Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed, 

 Spain "rued back" on a part of the bar- 

 gain. She yielded the 33 villages, as 

 agreed on, but exempted Llivia on the 

 plea that it was a town and not a village. 



So for 250 years Llivia has remained 

 a Spanish town inside the French fron- 

 tier. It is Spanish in everything but lo- 

 cation. The Spanish mails go there, and 

 Spanish taxes are occasionally collected 

 there, and Spanish money is taken, and 

 there is a post of the Guardia Civile upon 

 the public square. As one jolts down the 

 neutral road toward Llivia in the carrier's 

 cart, one could toss his hat on either side 

 into France. The very water that runs 

 in the irrigating ditches at the sides runs 

 in French territory. 



"The principal trade of Llivia," accord- 

 ing to the guide-books, "is in articles of 

 contraband." 



At Llivia the stranger suffers from the 

 unjust suspicion that he is an officer of 

 the law. Elsewhere in Catalonia the peo- 

 ple are friendly and of an American self- 

 respect. The boy who brought the morn- 

 ing coffee at Seo d'Urgel shook hands af- 

 fectionately when we parted. The carter 

 of Puigcerda cheerfully perjured himself 

 when the French soldier abandoned his 

 midday drowse beneath a tree and came 

 to look at me. The carter said we were 

 friends, and later took the franc with 



which this divagation was rewarded 

 rather under protest. He was understood 

 to say that any one would do as much for 

 a comrade. Everywhere one encounters 

 the most open-hearted and open-handed 

 kindness. But at Llivia one is watched 

 sullenly. Too often, perhaps, smuggling 

 confidences have been betrayed. 



So, I wandered unhappily through 

 Llivia's tortuous thoroughfares, conscious 

 of this civic distrust. There was a little 

 girl who was blowing with a hand bellows 

 upon the coals in the bottom of what 

 seemed an early form of the tailor's 

 goose. Ashes spurted out of vents at the 

 side, and the coals at last glowed a yellow 

 red in the hollow of the pressing iron. 

 All this was magnificently new to me. 

 and I beamed upon the girl and prepared 

 to take a photograph when a long arm 

 stretched from a doorway and girl and 

 iron were retrieved. Then a door that 

 would have withstood a battering ram 

 closed softly in my face. 



A TOWN READY EOR A SIEGE 



But perhaps this pessimism is general 

 and is not confined to the unvouched-for 

 individual. The windows are barred with 

 thick steel. Sometimes these bars are set 

 with knife-like spikes, the edges of which 

 have once been sharp, to catch the pred- 

 atory arm that sought to reach through. 



When a housewife goes to the munici- 

 pal fountain to draw water or wash the 

 daily salad, she closes her great, nail- 

 studded door behind her and locks it with 

 a key that might weigh a pound or more. 

 If the municipal pig bothers her too 

 greatly, she may withdraw this huge key 

 from her girdle and throw it at him, so 

 that it clangs loudly on the uneven cobbles 

 in the rebound from his dusty hide. 



There are overhanging balconies from 

 which an attacking force might be re- 

 sisted, and slits in some doors through 

 which the caller is inspected before the 

 bars are drawn. One might say that 

 Llivia could stand a siege today, if only 

 medieval means were used against her 

 medieval defenses. 



Even the church seems fort as much as 

 sanctuary. One long old wall is pierced 

 by loopholes for archers and is bare of 

 any other window. It is defended at the 

 corners by loopholed bastions. One gains 



