The Magnificent Duchess De La Torre, Wife Of The Regent
Serrano, Is A Cuban Born And Bred.
In one particular Madrid is unique among capitals, - it has no suburbs.
It lies in a desolate table-land
In the windy waste of New Castile; on
the north the snowy Guadarrama chills its breezes, and on every other
side the tawny landscape stretches away in dwarfish hills and shallow
ravines barren of shrub or tree, until distance fuses the vast steppes
into one drab plain, which melts in the hazy verge of the warm horizon.
There are no villages sprinkled in the environs to lure the Madrilenos
out of their walls for a holiday. Those delicious picnics that break
with such enchanting freshness and variety the steady course of life in
other capitals cannot here exist. No Parisian loves la bonne ville so
much that he does not call those the happiest of days on which he
deserts her for a row at Asnieres, a donkey-ride at Enghien, or a
bird-like dinner in the vast chestnuts of Sceaux. "There is only one
Kaiserstadt," sings the loyal Kerl of Vienna, but he shakes the dust of
the Graben from his feet on holiday mornings, and makes his merry
pilgrimage to the lordly Schoen-brunn or the heartsome Dornbach, or the
wooded eyry of the Kahlenberg. What would white-bait be if not eaten at
Greenwich? What would life be in the great cities without the knowledge
that just outside, an hour away from the toil and dust and struggle of
this money-getting world, there are green fields, and whispering
forests, and verdurous nooks of breezy shadow by the side of brooks
where the white pebbles shine through the mottled stream, - where you
find great pied pan-sies under your hands, and catch the black beady
eyes of orioles watching you from the thickets, and through the lush
leafage over you see patches of sky flecked with thin clouds that sail
so lazily you cannot be sure if the blue or the white is moving?
Existence without these luxuries would be very much like life in Madrid.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 12 of 254
Words from 2992 to 3347
of 67759
