I Am Not Sure But I Valued The House Of Alva Somewhat For The Chance My
Visit To It Gave Me Of Seeing A Sevillian Tenement-House Such As I Had
Hoped I Might See.
One hears that such houses are very scrupulously kept
by the janitors who compel the tenants to a cleanliness not perhaps
always their nature.
At any rate, this one, just across the way from the
Alva House, was of a surprising neatness. It was built three stories
high, with galleries looking into an open court and doors giving from
these into the several tenements. As fortune, which does not continually
smile on travel, would have it that morning, two ladies of the house
were having a vivid difference of opinion on an upper gallery. Or at
least one was, for the other remained almost as silent as the spectators
who grouped themselves about her or put their heads out of the windows
to see, as well as hear, what it was about. I wish I knew and I would
tell the reader. The injured party, and I am sure she must have been
deeply injured, showered her enemy with reproaches, and each time when
she had emptied the vials of her wrath with much shaking of her hands in
the wrong-doer's face she went away a few yards and filled them up again
and then returned for a fresh discharge. It was perfectly like a scene
of Goldoni and like many a passage of real life in his native city, and
I was rapt in it across fifty years to the Venice I used to know.
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