IX
Now I Look Back And Am Glad I Had Not Consciously With Me, As We Drove
Away, The Boy
Who once meant to write the life of Cervantes, and who I
knew from my recollection of his idolatry of
That chief of Spaniards
would not have listened to the excuses of Valladolid for a moment. All
appeared fair and noble in that Spain of his which shone with such
allure far across the snows through which he trudged morning and evening
with his father to and from the printing-office, and made his dream of
that great work the common theme of their talk. Now the boy is as
utterly gone as the father, who was a boy too at heart, but who died a
very old man many years ago; and in the place of both is another old man
trammeled in his tangled memories of Spain visited and unvisited.
It would be a poor sort of make-believe if this survivor pretended any
lasting indignation with Valladolid because of the stench of
Cervantes's house. There are a great many very bad smells in Spain
everywhere, and it is only fair to own that a psychological change
toward Valladolid had been operating itself in me since luncheon which
Valladolid was not very specifically to blame for. Up to the time the
wedding guests left us we had said Valladolid was the most interesting
city we had ever seen, and we would like to stay there a week; then,
suddenly, we began to turn against it.
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