To Be Sure, We Had Seen
And Overseen The Like Of These Long Before In Italy; But They Were
Admirably
Arranged in this museum, so that without the eager help of the
custodians (which two cents would buy at any
Turn) we could have found
pleasure in them, whereas the Aztec antiquities were mostly copies in
plaster and the Inca jewelry not striking.
Before finding the place we had had the help of two policemen and one
newsboy and a postman in losing ourselves in the Prado where we mostly
sought for it, and with difficulty kept ourselves from being thrust into
the gallery there. In Spain a man, or even a boy, does not like to say
he does not know where a place is; he is either too proud or too polite
to do it, and he will misdirect you without mercy. But the morning was
bright, and almost warm, and we should have looked forward to weeks of
sunny weather if our experience had not taught us that it would rain in
the afternoon, and if greater experience than ours had not instructed us
that there would be many days of thick fog now before the climate of
Madrid settled itself to the usual brightness of February. We had time
to note again in the Paseo Castellana, which is the fashionable drive,
that it consists of four rows of acacias and tamarisks and a stretch of
lawn, with seats beside it; the rest is bare grasslessness, with a
bridle-path on one side and a tram-line on the other.
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