guide could hardly persuade us his house was worth seeing. Now I am glad
he prevailed with us, for we have since come to find a peculiar charm in
these long features and the characteristic coloring of El Greco's
pictures. The little house full of memorials and the little garden full
of flowers, which ought to have been all forget-me-nots, were entirely
delightful. As every one but I knew, and even I now know, he was born a
Greek with the name of Theotocopuli, and studied tinder Titian till he
found his account in a manner of his own, making long noses and long
chins and high narrow foreheads in ashen gray, and at last went mad in
the excess of his manner. The house has been restored by the Marquis de
la Vega, according to his notion of an old Spanish house, and has the
pleasantest small _patio_ in the world, looked down into from a carved
wooden gallery, with a pavement of red tiles interset with Moorish tiles
of divers colors. There are interesting pictures everywhere, and on one
wall the certificate of the owner's membership in the Hispanic Society
of America, which made me feel at home because it was signed with the
name of an American friend of mine, who is repressed by prosperity from
being known as a poet and one of the first Spanish scholars of any time.

The whole place is endearingly homelike and so genuinely hospitable that
we almost sat down to luncheon in the kitchen with the young Spanish
king who had lunched with the Marquis there a few weeks before. There
was a veranda outside where we could linger till the rain held up, and
look into the garden where the flowers ought to have been
forget-me-nots, but were as usual mostly marigolds and zinnias. They
crowded round tile-edged pools, and other flowers bloomed in pots on the
coping of the garden-seats built up of thin tiles carved on their edges
to an inward curve. It is strongly believed that there are several
stories under the house, and the Marquis is going some day to dig them
up or out to the last one where the original Jewish owner of the house