VI


It was hard, after being shut up several days, that one must not go out
after nightfall, and if one went out by day, one must go with closed
lips and avoid all talking in the street under penalty of incurring the
dreaded pneumonia of Madrid. Except for that dreaded pneumonia, I
believe the air of Madrid is not so pestilential as it has been
reported. Public opinion is beginning to veer in favor of it, just as
the criticism which has pronounced Madrid commonplace and unpicturesque
because it is not obviously old, is now finding a charm in it peculiar
to the place. Its very modernity embodies and imparts the charm, which
will grow as the city grows in wideness and straightness. It is in the
newer quarter that it recalls Rome or the newer quarters of Rome; but
there is an old part of it that recalls the older part of Naples, though
the streets are not quite so narrow nor the houses so high. There is
like bargaining at the open stands with the buyers and sellers
chaffering over them; there is a likeness in the people's looks, too,
but when it comes to the most characteristic thing of Naples, Madrid is
not in it for a moment. I mean the bursts of song which all day long and
all night long you hear in Naples; and this seems as good a place as any
to say that to my experience Spain is a songless land. We had read much
of the song and dance there, but though the dance might be hired the
song was never offered for love or money. To be sure, in Toledo, once, a
woman came to her door across the way under otir hotel window and sang
over the slops she emptied into the street, but then she shut the door