himself in the transaction. He does not put himself about in serving
her, and if she intimates that he is rudely indifferent, and that though
she has often come to him before she will never come again, he remains
tranquil. From experience I cannot say how true this is; but certainly I
failed to awaken any lively emotion in the booksellers of whom I tried
to buy some modern plays. It seemed to me that I was vexing them in the
Oriental calm which they would have preferred to my money, or even my
interest in the new Spanish drama. But in a shop where fans were sold,
the shopman, taken in an unguarded moment, seemed really to enter into
the spirit of our selection for friends at home; he even corrected my
wrong accent in the Spanish word for fan, which was certainly going a
great way.




XII


It was not the weather for fans in Madrid, where it rained that cold
rain every afternoon, and once the whole of one day, and we could not
reasonably expect to see fans in the hands of ladies in real life so
much as in the pictures of ladies on the fans themselves. In fact, I
suppose that to see the Madrilenas most in character one should see them
in summer which in southern countries is the most characteristic season.
Theophile Gautier was governed by this belief when he visited Spain in
the hottest possible weather, and left for the lasting delight of the
world the record of that _Voyage en Espagne_ which he made seventy-two
years ago. He then thought the men better dressed than the women at
Madrid. Their boots are as "varnished, and they are gloved as white as