He Seldom Smiled, But When He
Did You Could See It Was From His Heart.
His contrast, his very antithesis, the joyous concierge, was always
smiling, and was every way more like an Italian than a Spaniard.
He
followed us into the wettest Madrid weather with the sunny rays of his
temperament, and welcomed our returning cab with an effulgence that
performed the effect of an umbrella in the longish walk from the
curbstone to the hotel door, past the grape arbor whose fruit ripened
for us only in a single bunch, though he had so confidently prophesied
our daily pleasure in it. He seemed at first to be the landlord, and
without reference to higher authority he gave us beautiful rooms
overlooking the bacchanal vine which would have been filled with
sunshine if the weather had permitted. When he lapsed into the
concierge, he got us, for five pesetas, so deep and wide a wood-box,
covered with crimson cloth, that he was borne out by the fact in
declaring that the wood in it would last us as long as we stayed; it was
oak wood, hard as iron, and with the bellows that accompanied it we blew
the last billet of it into a solid coal by which we drank our last
coffee in that hotel. His spirit, his genial hopefulness, reconciled us
to the infirmities of the house during the period of transition
beginning for it and covering our stay. It was to be rebuilt on a scale
out-Ritzing the Ritz; but in the mean while it was not quite the Ritz.
There was a time when the elevator-shaft seemed to have tapped the awful
sources of the smell in the house of Cervantes at Valladolid, but I do
not remember what blameless origin the concierge assigned to the odor,
or whether it had anything to do with the horses and the hens which a
chance-opened back door showed us stabled in the rear of the hotel's
grandiose entrance.
Our tourist clientele, thanks I think to the allure of our concierge for
all comers, was most respectable, though there was no public place for
people to sit but a small reading-room colder than the baths of Apollo.
But when he entered the place it was as if a fire were kindled in the
minute stove never otherwise heated, and the old English and French
newspapers freshened themselves up to the actual date as nearly as they
could. We were mostly, perhaps, Spanish families come from our several
provinces for a bit of the season which all Spanish families of civil
condition desire more or less of: lean, dark fathers, slender,
white-stuccoed daughters, and fat, white-stuccoed mothers; very
still-faced, and grave-mannered. We were also a few English, and from
time to time a few Americans, but I believe we were not, however worthy,
very great-world. The concierge who had so skilfully got us together
was instant in our errands and commissions, and when it came to two of
us being shut up with colds brought from Burgos it vas he who
supplemented the promptness of the apothecaries in sending our medicines
and coming himself at times to ask after our welfare.
IX
In a strange country all the details of life are interesting, and we
noticed with peculiar interest that Spain was a country where the
prescriptions were written in the vulgar tongue instead of the little
Latin in which prescriptions are addressed to the apothecaries of other
lands. We were disposed to praise the faculty if not the art for this,
but our doctor forbade. He said it was because the Spanish apothecaries
were so unlearned that they could not read even so little Latin as the
shortest prescription contained. Still I could not think the custom a
bad one, though founded on ignorance, and I do not see why it should not
have made for the greater safety of those who took the medicine if those
who put it up should follow a formula in their native tongue. I know
that at any rate we found the Spanish medicines beneficial and were
presently suffered to go out-of-doors, but with those severe injunctions
against going out after nightfall or opening our lips when we went out
by day. It was rather a bother, but it was fine to feel one's self in
the classic Madrid tradition of danger from pneumonia and to be of the
dignified company of the Spanish gentlemen whom we met with the border
of their cloaks over their mouths; like being a character in a _capa y
espada_ drama.
There was almost as little acted as spoken drama in the streets. I have
given my impression of the songlessness of Spain in Madrid as elsewhere,
but if there was no street singing there was often street playing by
pathetic bands of blind minstrels with guitars and mandolins. The blind
abound everywhere in Spain in that profession of street beggary which I
always encouraged, believing as I do that comfort in this unbalanced
world cannot be too constantly reminded of misery. As the hunchbacks are
in Italy, or the wooden peg-legged in England, so the blind are in Spain
for number. I could not say how touching the sight of their
sightlessness was, or how the remembrance of it makes me wish that I had
carried more coppers with me when I set out. I would gladly authorize
the reader when he goes to Madrid to do the charity I often neglected;
he will be the better man, or even woman, for it; and he need not mind
if his beneficiary is occasionally unworthy; he may be unworthy himself;
I am sure I was.
But the Spanish street is rarely the theatrical spectacle that the
Italian street nearly always is. Now and then there was a bit in Madrid
which one would be sorry to have missed, such as the funeral of a civil
magistrate, otherwise unknown to me, which I saw pass my cafe window:
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