A drowsy porter showed me another palace in the same square which I had overlooked, and told me that in it was born the great king Philip II., from whom Valladolid had received the title of a city. “You know, sir, Philip II., son of Charles V., father of”—“I know, I know,” I hastened to reply to save the narration, and, casting a gloomy glance at the gloomy palace, I passed on.
Opposite to the royal palace is the Dominican convent of San Pablo, with a façade of the Gothic order so richly and extravagantly ornamented with statuettes, bas-reliefs, and traceries of every sort that one half of them would amply adorn an immense palace. At that moment the sun was shining on it, and the effect was magnificent. While I stood contemplating at my ease that labyrinth of sculpture, from which it seems one’s eye will never turn when once it has become fixed upon it, a little rogue, six or eight years old, who had been sitting in a distant corner of the square, rushed from his place as though he had been thrown from a sling, and ran toward me, crying in an affectionate, plaintive tone, “Señorito! Señorito! I like you so much!”
This is something new, I thought, for the ragamuffins to make declarations of love. He came and stood in front of me, and I asked, “Why do you love me?”
“Because,” he answered frankly, “you will give me alms.”
“And why should I give you alms?”
“Because,” he replied, hesitating, and then resolutely, in the tones of one who has found a good reason—“because, sir, you have a book.”
The Guide which I held under my arm! But, you see, one must travel to learn these new things. I carried a Guide, foreigners carry Guides; foreigners give alms; therefore I ought to give him alms; all this reasoning instead of saying, “I am hungry!”
I was pleased by the plausibility of this discovery, and dropped into the hands of this profound boy the few cuartos which I found in my pockets.
Turning into a street near by, I saw the façade of the Dominican college of San Gregorio, Gothic in its architecture, and more dignified and richer than the convent of San Pablo. Then I went from street to street until I came to the square of the cathedral. At the point where the street widens into the square I met a very graceful little Spanish lady, to whom I might have applied those two verses of Espronceda:
“Y que yo la he de querer
Por su paso de andadura,”