A Luxury Of Grief, In Those Who Can Afford It, Consists In Shutting Up
The House Where A Death Has Taken Place And Never Suffering It To Be
Opened Again.
I once saw a beautiful house and wide garden thus
abandoned in one of the most fashionable streets of Madrid.
I inquired
about it, and found it was formerly the residence of the Duke of - - - .
His wife had died there many years before, and since that day not a door
nor a window had been opened. The garden gates were red and rough with
rust. Grass grew tall and rank in the gravelled walks. A thick lush
undergrowth had overrun the flower-beds and the lawns. The blinds were
rotting over the darkened windows. Luxuriant vines clambered over all
the mossy doors. The stucco was peeling from the walls in unwholesome
blotches. Wild birds sang all day in the safe solitude. There was
something impressive in this spot of mould and silence, lying there so
green and implacable in the very heart of a great and noisy city. The
duke lived in Paris, leading the rattling life of a man of the world. He
never would sell or let that Madrid house. Perhaps in his heart also,
that battered thoroughfare worn by the pattering boots of Ma-bine and
the Bois, and the Quartier Breda, there was a green spot sacred to
memory and silence, where no footfall should ever light, where no living
voice should ever be heard, shut out from the world and its cares and
its pleasures, where through the gloom of dead days he could catch a
glimpse of a white hand, a flash of a dark eye, the rustle of a trailing
robe, and feel sweeping over him the old magic of love's young dream,
softening his fancy to tender regret and his eyes to a happy mist -
"Like that which kept the heart of Eden green
Before the useful trouble of the rain."
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE
Intelligent Spaniards with whom I have conversed on political matters
have often exclaimed, "Ah, you Americans are happy!
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