"Venice? oh yes."
"Is it true that it is a city which floats on the sea?"
And here she made a thousand requests that I would describe Venice, and that I would tell her what the people were like in that strange city, and what they do all the day long, and how they dress. And while I was talking besides the pains I took to express myself with a little grace, and to eat meanwhile the badly-cooked eggs and stale sausage—I was obliged to see her draw nearer and nearer to me, that she might hear me better perhaps, without being conscious of the act. She came so close that I could smell the fragrance of the rose in her hair and feel her warm breath; I was obliged, I may say, to make three efforts at once—one with my head, another with my stomach, and a third with both—especially when, now and then, she would say, "How beautiful!"—a compliment which applied to the Grand Canal, but which had upon me the effect a bag full of napoleons might have upon a beggar if swung under his nose by an insolent banker.
"Ah, señorita!" I said at last, beginning to lose patience, "what matters it, after all, whether cities are beautiful or not? Those who are born in them think nothing of it, and the traveller still less. I arrived at Cordova yesterday: it is a beautiful city, without doubt. Well—will you believe it?—I have already forgotten all that I have seen; I no longer wish to see anything; I do not even know what city I am in. Palaces, mosques, they make me laugh. When you have a consuming fire in your heart, do you go to the mosque to quench it?—Excuse me, will you move back a little?—When you feel such a madness that you could grind up a plate with your teeth, do you go to look at palaces? Believe me, the traveller's life is a sad one. It is a penance of the hardest sort. It is torture. It is...." A prudent blow with her fan closed my mouth, which was going too far both in words and action. I attacked the chop.
"Poor fellow!" murmured the Andalusian with a laugh after she had given a glance around. "Are all the Italians as ardent as you?"
"How should I know? Are all the Andalusians as beautiful as you?"
The girl laid her hand on the table.
"Take that hand away," I said.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because I want to eat in peace."