VII.
The home—that sacred abode of the patriarch, of the Roman citizen, of the feudal lord, of the very Arab; the holy arch of the Penates, temple of hospitality, and altar of the family—has completely disappeared in our great modern centres. The home survives in the provinces alone. There our house is our own. In Madrid it is generally the landlord's. In the provinces our house shelters us for twenty, thirty, forty years at least. In Madrid one moves every month, or at least every year. Our home has a physiognomy of its own, which never varies, ever kindly and sympathetic. It grows old with us; it bears the impress of our lives; it preserves our footprints. In Madrid the exterior changes every leap year; the apartments are arrayed in new garments; that furniture is sold which our contact had consecrated. At home the whole edifice is ours: the grassy court, the poultry-yard filled with chickens, the high, cheery terraces, the deep well,—the children's terror,—the monumental tower, the broad cool, vine-covered summer-house. Here we occupy a half-flat, paper-lined, and divided into mean apartments, with no view of the sky, no sun, no air. There we have that neighborly affection, something between friendship and relationship, which binds together all the families of one street. Here the man who moves about noisily above our heads is unknown to us, neither do we know the man who dies beyond the partition of our alcove, and whose death-rattle disturbs our sleep. Our provincial home is a cluster of memories, of local attachments: here the room in which we were born, there the room where our brother died; here the empty hall in which we played as children, there the study in which we wrote our first verses. On the chapter of a column, in the trough of an old ceiling, swallows have built their nests, and every year the faithful couple fly over from Africa to hatch a new brood. In Madrid all this is unknown. And the hearth, that consecrated stone, cold in summer, cold in our absence, but warm and friendly during the happy winter evenings when all the children are brought together and grouped about the old people,—for the colleges have their vacations, the married daughters bring their little ones home on a visit, and the absent ones, the prodigal sons, come back to the heart of the family,—where, tell me, where is this hearth in the houses of the capital? Can we call a French mantel-piece, made of marble, bronze, and iron, a hearth, that which one can buy at a store, at wholesale or retail, and can even hire, if need be? The French mantel-piece is the symbol of home in a great city. People of Madrid, that is your hearth,—a hearth subject to the changes of fashion, a hearth which is sold when it is old, which can be moved from room to room, from street to street, and which can even be pawned in an emergency.