Everywhere Shone Silver-Bright
Radiators, Such As We Had Not Seen Since We Left Their Like Freezing In
Burgos; But
Though the weather presently changed from an Andalusian
softness to a Castilian severity after a snowfall in the Sierra, the
Radiators remained insensible to the difference and the air nipped the
nose and fingers wherever one went in the hotel. The hall porter, who
knew everything, said the boilers were out of order, and a traveler who
had been there the winter before confirmed him with the testimony that
they were out of order even in January. There may not have been any fire
under them then, as there was none now; but if they needed repairing now
it was clearly because they needed repairing then. In the corner of one
of our rooms the frescoed plastering had scaled off, and we knew that if
we came back a year later the same spot would offer us a familiar
welcome.
But why do I gird at that hotel in Granada as if I knew of no faults in
American hotels? I know of many and like faults, and I do not know of a
single hotel of ours with such a glorious outlook and downlook as that
hotel in Granada. The details which the sunlight of the morrow revealed
to us when we had mastered the mystery of our window-catch and stood
again on our balcony took nothing from the loveliness of the moonlight
picture, but rather added to it, and, besides a more incredible scene of
mountain and plain and city, it gave us one particular tree in a garden
almost under us which my heart clings to still with a rapture changing
to a fond regret.
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