I Went Into One Of
Them, However, With A Spanish Friend, And I Found It Beautiful, Most
Original, And Most Impressive For Its Architecture And Painting, But I
Forget Which Church It Was.
We were going rather a desultory drive
through those less frequented parts of the city which I have mentioned
as like a sort of muted Naples:
Poor folk living much out-of-doors,
buying and selling at hucksters' stands and booths, and swarming about
the chief market, where the guilty were formerly put to death, but the
innocent are now provisioned. Outside the market was not attractive, and
what it was within we did not look to see. We went rather to satisfy my
wish to see whether the Manzanares is as groveling a stream as the
guide-books pretend in their effort to give a just idea of the natural
disadvantages of Madrid, as the only great capital without an adequate
river. But whether abetted by the arts of my friend or not, the
Manzanares managed to conceal itself from me; when we left our carriage
and went to look for it, I saw only some pretty rills and falls which it
possibly fed and which lent their beauty to the charming up and down
hill walks, now a public pleasaunce, but formerly the groves and gardens
of the royal palace. Our talk in Spanish from him and Italian from me
was of Tolstoy and several esthetic and spiritual interests, and when we
remounted and drove back to the city, whom should I see, hard by the
King's palace, but those dear Chilians of my heart whom we had left at
Valladolid - husband, wife, sister, with the addition of a Spanish lady
of very acceptable comeliness, in white gloves, and as blithe as they.
In honor of the capital the other ladies wore white gloves too, but the
husband and brother still kept the straw hat which I had first known him
in at San Sebastian, and which I hope yet to know him by in New York.
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