It Is Of Various
Constituents, According As It Is A Fashionable, A Literary, Or An
Artistic _Tertulia,_ Or All Three
With an infusion of science.
Oftenest, I believe, it is a domestic affair and all degrees of
cousinship resort to
It with brothers and sisters and uncles, who meet
with the pleasant Latin liking of frequent meetings among kindred. In
some cases no doubt it is a brilliant reunion where lively things are
said; in others it may be dull; in far the most cases it seems to be
held late at night or early in the morning.
VI
It was hard, after being shut up several days, that one must not go out
after nightfall, and if one went out by day, one must go with closed
lips and avoid all talking in the street under penalty of incurring the
dreaded pneumonia of Madrid. Except for that dreaded pneumonia, I
believe the air of Madrid is not so pestilential as it has been
reported. Public opinion is beginning to veer in favor of it, just as
the criticism which has pronounced Madrid commonplace and unpicturesque
because it is not obviously old, is now finding a charm in it peculiar
to the place. Its very modernity embodies and imparts the charm, which
will grow as the city grows in wideness and straightness. It is in the
newer quarter that it recalls Rome or the newer quarters of Rome; but
there is an old part of it that recalls the older part of Naples, though
the streets are not quite so narrow nor the houses so high.
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