It Was
In Every Way A Contrast To The Road We Had Come From The Cartuja:
An
avenue of gardened paths and embowered driveways, where we hoped to join
the rank and fashion of Granada in their afternoon's outing.
But there
was only one carriage besides our own with people in it, who looked no
greater world than ourselves, and a little girl riding with her groom.
On one hand were pretty villas, new-looking and neat, which I heard
could sometimes be taken for the summer at rents so low that I am glad I
have forgotten the exact figures lest the reader should doubt my word.
Nothing but the fact that the winter was then hanging over us from the
Sierras prevented my taking one of them for the summer that had passed,
the Granadan summer being notoriously the most delightful in the world.
On the other hand stretched the wonderful Vega, which covers so many
acres in history and romance, and there, so near that we look down into
them at times were "the silvery windings of the Xenil," which glides
through so many descriptive passages of Irving's page; only now, on
account of recent rain, its windings were rather coppery.
At the hotel on the terrace under our balcony we found on our return a
party of Spanish ladies and gentlemen taking tea, or whatever drink
stood for it in their custom: no doubt chocolate; but it was at least
the afternoon-tea hour. The women's clothes were just from Paris, and
the men's from London, but their customs, I suppose, were national; the
women sat on one side of the table and talked across it to the men,
while they ate and drank, and then each sex grouped itself apart and
talked to its kind, the women in those hardened vowels of a dialect from
which the Andalusians for conversational purposes have eliminated all
consonants.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 325 of 376
Words from 89196 to 89515
of 103320
