“Here we are!” cried the Spaniard. “Look!”
I put my head out of the window.
“That is the royal palace.”
I saw an immense pile on an eminence, but shut my eyes quickly, for the sun was shining in my face. Everybody got out, and then commenced the customary bustling
“Of cloaks and shawls and other rags”
which almost always shuts out the first view of the city. The train stopped, and I alighted to find myself in a square full of coupés surrounded by a clamorous crowd. A hundred hands are extended for my valise, a hundred mouths shout in my ear; it is a devilish pack of porters, cabbies, cicerones, hotel-clerks, guards, and boys. I elbow my way through them, jump on an omnibus full of people, and am off. We go down an avenue, cross a great square, turn into a long straight street, and arrive at the Puerta del Sol.
It is a stupendous sight! A semicircular square of vast extent, surrounded by high buildings, at the mouth of ten great streets like so many torrents, from every one of which pours a continuous roaring flood of people and of vehicles. Everything one sees is in proportion to the immensity of the place: sidewalks as wide as streets, cafés as wide as squares, a fountain the size of a lake—on every side a dense, rapidly-shifting crowd, a discordant roar, a subtle air of cheerfulness and gaiety in the faces, the gestures, and the colors, which makes one feel that neither the people nor the city is entirely strange, and gives one an insane desire to join in the uproar, to salute everybody, to run here and there, as if one were revisiting those sights and people rather than seeing them for the first time. I enter a hotel, and leave it immediately, and begin to wander at random through the city. There are no grand palaces, no ancient monuments of art, but wide, clean, cheerful streets, flanked by houses painted in lively colors, and interrupted by open squares of a thousand different forms, as though they have been dropped here and there by chance, and in every square there is a garden, a fountain, and a statuette. Some streets run up hill in such a manner that on turning into them one sees the sky at the end, and one imagines that they open into the country, but when one has reached the top another long street stretches off as far as one can see.
Every little while there are crossways where five, six, and even eight streets meet, and here there is a continuous stream of carriages and people passing each other. The walls are covered for long spaces with show-bills and placards; in the shops there is an incessant coming and going; the cafés are crowded; everywhere there is the rush of a great city. Alcalá (Castle) Street, so wide that it looks like a rectangular square, cuts Madrid in half from the Puerta del Sol eastward, and ends in a vast park which extends all along one side of the city and contains gardens, promenades, open squares, theatres, bull-rings, triumphal arches, museums, palaces, and fountains.
I jumped into a carriage, saying to the driver, “Where you will.” Past the statue of Murillo, up Alcalá Street, down the Street of the Turk, where General Prim was assassinated; across the square of the Cortes, where stands the statue of Miguel Cervantes; through the Plaza Mayor, where blazed the fires lighted by the Inquisition; and then back again, past the house of Lope de Vega, out into the vast Plaza del Oriente, which stretches in front of the royal palace, where towers the equestrian statue of Philip IV. in the midst of an oval garden surrounded by forty colossal statues—climbing up toward the centre of the city, across other wide streets and cheerful squares, and crossways thronged with people, until finally I return to the hotel, declaring that Madrid is rich, grand, gay, populous, and attractive, and that I am going to see it all, and stay and enjoy it so long as my account-book and the mildness of the season will permit.
In the course of a few days a good friend found me a casa de huéspedes, a guest-house, and I installed myself there. These guest-houses are nothing else than the homes of families who give board and lodging to students, artists, and foreigners at prices which vary, understand, according to the manner in which you choose to eat and sleep, but which are always lower than the hotel rates, with the inestimable advantage of breathing the air of home-life, forming friendships, and being treated as a member of the family rather than as a boarder. The mistress of the house was a pleasant lady on the hither side of fifty, the widow of a painter who had studied at Rome, Florence, and Naples, and who had all his life cherished a grateful and affectionate remembrance of Italy. She too, as was natural, displayed a very lively sympathy toward our country, and manifested it by joining me every day at dinner, when she would recount the life, death, and miraculous doings of all her relatives and friends, as though I was the only confidant she had in Madrid. I met few Spaniards who spoke so rapidly, so frankly, and with such an easy flow of phrases, bon-mots, similes, proverbs, and expressions. At first this disconcerted me, for I understood little and was every moment obliged to ask her to repeat; nor was I always able to make myself understood. In a word, it was impressed upon me that in studying the language of the books I had wasted a great deal of time in storing my memory with words and phrases which are seldom used in ordinary conversation, while, on the other hand, I had neglected very many other forms of speech which are indispensable. I was obliged, therefore, to begin again, to rally my forces, to make notes, and, above all, to keep my ear always on the qui vive, so that I might profit as much as possible by the speech of the people. And I was convinced of this fact: that one may live for ten, thirty, or forty years in a foreign city, but unless one makes an effort at once, unless one devotes considerable time to study, unless one is always standing, as Giusti said, “with one’s eyes wide open,” one will either never learn to speak the language or will speak it incorrectly. At Madrid I was acquainted with some old Italians who had lived in Spain from their earliest youth, and yet they spoke wretched Spanish. Indeed, it is not an easy language, even for us Italians, or, to speak more clearly, it presents the great difficulty of easy languages, for it is not allowable to speak them poorly, and yet by so doing one can make one’s self understood. The Italian who wishes to speak Spanish in conversation with cultured people, where every one would understand him if he spoke French, must justify his audacity by speaking with facility and grace.