Sometimes Arban comes down from Paris to recover from his winter
fatigues and bewitch the Spains with his wizard baton.
In all this vast crowd nobody is in a hurry. They have all night before
them. They stayed quietly at home in the stress of the noontide when the
sunbeams were falling in the glowing streets like javelins, - they
utilized some of the waste hours of the broiling afternoon in sleep, and
are fresh as daisies now. The women are not haunted by the thought of
lords and babies growling and wailing at home. Their lords are beside
them, the babies are sprawling in the clean gravel by their chairs. Late
in the small hours I have seen these family parties in the promenade,
the husband tranquilly smoking his hundredth cigarette, his placens
uxor dozing in her chair, one baby asleep on the ground, and another
slumbering in her lap.
This Madrid climate is a gallant one, and kindlier to the women than the
men. The ladies are built on the old-fashioned generous plan. Like a
Southern table in the old times, the only fault is too abundant plenty.
They move along with a superb dignity of carriage that Banting would
like to banish from the world, their round white shoulders shining in
the starlight, their fine heads elegantly draped in the coquettish and
always graceful mantilla. But you would look in vain among the men of
Madrid for such fulness and liberality of structure. They are thin,
eager, sinewy in ap' pearance, - though it is the spareness of the Turk,
not of the American. It comes from tobacco and the Guadarrama winds.
This still, fine, subtle air that blows from the craggy peaks over the
treeless plateau seems to take all superfluous moisture out of the men
of Madrid. But it is, like Benedick's wit, "a most manly air, it will
not hurt a woman." This tropic summer-time brings the halcyon days of
the vagabonds of Madrid. They are a temperate, reasonable people, after
all, when they are let alone. They do not require the savage stimulants
of our colder-blooded race. The fresh air is a feast. As Walt Whitman
says, they loaf and invite their souls. They provide for the banquet
only the most spiritual provender. Their dissipation is confined
principally to starlight and zephyrs; the coarser and wealthier spirits
indulge in ice, agraz, and meringues dissolved in water. The climax of
their luxury is a cool bed. Walking about the city at midnight, I have
seen the fountains all surrounded by luxurious vagabonds asleep or in
revery, dozens of them stretched along the rim of the basins, in the
spray of the splashing water, where the least start would plunge them
in. But the dreams of these Latin beggars are too peaceful to trouble
their slumber. They lie motionless, amid the roar of wheels and the
tramp of a thousand feet, their bed the sculptured marble, their
covering the deep, amethystine vault, warm and cherishing with its
breath of summer winds, bright with its trooping stars. The Providence
of the worthless watches and guards them!
The chief commerce of the streets of Madrid seems to be fire and water,
bane and antidote. It would be impossible for so many match-venders to
live anywhere else, in a city ten times the size of Madrid. On every
block you will find a wandering merchant dolefully announcing paper and
phosphorus, - the one to construct cigarettes and the other to light
them. The matches are little waxen tapers very neatly made and enclosed
in pasteboard boxes, which are sold for a cent and contain about a
hundred fosforos. These boxes are ornamented with portraits of the
popular favorites of the day, and afford a very fair test of the
progress and decline of parties. The queen has disappeared from them
except in caricature, and the chivalrous face of Castelar and the heavy
Bourbon mouth of Don Carlos are oftener seen than any others. A Madrid
smoker of average industry will use a box a day. They smoke more
cigarettes than cigars, and in the ardor of conversation allow their
fire to go out every minute. A young Austrian, who was watching a
senorito light his wisp of paper for the fifth time, and mentally
comparing it with the volcano volume and kern-deutsch integrity of
purpose of the meerschaums of his native land, said to me: "What can you
expect of a people who trifle in that way with the only work of their
lives?"
It is this habit of constant smoking that makes the Madrilenos the
thirstiest people in the world; so that, alternating with the cry of
"Fire, lord-lings! Matches, chevaliers!" you hear continually the drone
so tempting to parched throats, "Water! who wants water? freezing water!
colder than snow!" This is the daily song of the Gallician who marches
along in his irrigating mission, with his brown blouse, his short
breeches, and pointed hat, like that Aladdin wears in the cheap
editions; a little varied by the Valentian in his party-colored mantle
and his tow trousers, showing the bronzed leg from the knee to the
blue-bordered sandals. Numerous as they are, they all seem to have
enough to do. They carry their scriptural-looking water-jars on their
backs, and a smart tray of tin and burnished brass, with meringues and
glasses, in front. The glasses are of enormous but not extravagant
proportions. These dropsical Iberians will drink water as if it were no
stronger than beer. In the winter-time, while the cheerful invitation
rings out to the same effect, - that the beverage is cold as the
snow, - the merchant prudently carries a little pot of hot water over a
spirit-lamp to take the chill off for shivery customers.
Madrid is one of those cities where strangers fear the climate less than
residents. Nothing is too bad for the Castilian to say of his native
air.
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