On that day I did not wish to learn anything more, and the dear knows how my head ached when I returned to the hotel. The day after, at the peep of dawn, I was back at the Alhambra, and again in the evening, and I continued to go there every day so long as I remained at Granada, with Gongora, with other friends, with guides, or alone; and the Alhambra always seemed vaster and more beautiful as I wandered through the courts and halls, and passed hour after hour sitting among the columns or gazing out of the windows with an ever-heightening pleasure, every time discovering new beauties, and ever abandoning myself to those vague and delightful fancies among which my mind had strayed on the first day. I cannot tell through which entrances my friends led me into the Alhambra, but I remember that every day on going there I saw walls and towers and deserted streets that I had not seen before, and the Alhambra seemed to me to have changed its site, to have been transformed, and surrounded as if by enchantment with new buildings that changed its original appearance. Who could describe the beauty of those sunset views; those fantastic groves flooded with moonlight; the immense plain and the snow-covered mountains on clear, serene nights; the imposing outlines of those enormous walls, superb towers, and those measureless trees under a starry sky; the prolonged rustling of those vast masses of verdure overflowing the valleys and climbing the hillsides? It was a spectacle before which my companions remained speechless, although they were born in Granada and accustomed from infancy to look upon these scenes. So we would walk along in silence, each buried in his own thoughts, with hearts oppressed by mild melancholy, and sometimes our eyes were wet with tears, and we raised our faces to heaven with a burst of gratitude and love.
On the day of my arrival at Granada, when I entered the hotel at midnight, instead of finding silence and quiet, I found the patio illuminated like a ball-room, people sipping sherbet at the tables, coming and going along the galleries, laughing and talking, and I was obliged to wait an hour before going to sleep. But I passed that hour very pleasantly. While I stood looking at a map of Spain on the wall a great burly fellow, with a face as red as a beet and a great stomach extending nearly to his knees, approached me and, touching his cap, asked if I was an Italian. I replied that I was, and he continued with a smile, "And so am I; I am the proprietor of the hotel."
"I am delighted to hear it, the more so because I see you are making money."
"Great Heavens!" he replied in a tone which he wished to seem melancholy. "Yes, ... I cannot complain; but, ... believe me, my dear sir, however well things may go, when one is far from his native land one always feels a void here;" and he put his hand upon his enormous chest.
I looked at his stomach.
"A great void," repeated mine host; "one never forgets one's country.... From what province are you, sir?"
"From Liguria. And you?"
"From Piedmont. Liguria! Piedmont! Lombardy! They are countries!"
"They are fine countries, there is no doubt of that, but, after all, you cannot complain of Spain. You are living in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and are proprietor of one of the finest hotels in the city; you have a crowd of guests all the year round, and then I see you enjoy enviable health."
"But the void?"