“Silence, you baggage, or by Heavens I’ll put a gag in your mouth which it won’t be so easy to shake off.”
“What is it, constable?”
“Notice has just been brought, sir, that two men have been fighting with knives in front of Mother Alfons tavern, and are both badly wounded.”
“Who are they?”
“El Chato and Malgesto.”
“Scenes in Madrid.” Mesonero Romanos (El Curioso Parlante) (1803-1882).
DELIGHTS OF A MADRID WINTER.
No, sir, you cannot deny that the best season of the year is winter. The theatres fill up. Gastronomists return to the juicy oyster; and as soon as it begins to freeze still their appetites with the tasty sea-bream. The crown ministers can infringe the laws with impunity, fearless of tumults and insurrections, for the people’s blood does not boil as in the month of July, and patriots prefer roasting chestnuts and toasting themselves over the brazier to haranguing in rain and snow. The shoeblacks dance with joy, for the mud is all in their favour. The doctors make their fortunes with colds and lung diseases. The apothecaries sell cough lozenges to their hearts’ content. The maid-servants make a new conquest every day of the Savoyards who cross the Pyrenees to clean out our chimneys and purses with their monkeys and hurdy-gurdies. But besides these and other votaries, who have powerful reasons for liking winter, there are other admirers of this season dubbed rigorous by the ignorant vulgar. These devotees are the only really intelligent beings, and nobody will be able to deny they are right, when they patent the advantages of the months of November, December, and January over those of May, June, and July.
The monotony of summer is insipid. The sun shines upon everything with the very same rays. The flowers unceasingly diffuse the identical scent. The country is always green.... It is unsupportable, horrible! The votaries of summer say that all this makes the little birds charm with their trills and warbles every heart sensible to the delights of harmony. And we defenders of winter reply, who can compare the feeble song of the timid nightingale to the animated and piercing duets intoned by enamoured cats on our roofs in January? And the rain? Can anything be more delicious than rain? Oh, how I rave for the rain! Let us talk about the rain!