Every Afternoon It Is A Cloud Of Dust And Every
Evening A Welter Of Mud, For The Iberian Idea Of Watering A Street Is To
Soak It Into A Slough.
But nothing can spoil the Paseo, and that evening
we had it mostly to ourselves, though there were two or three carriages
with ladies in hats, and at one place other ladies dismounted and
courageously walking, while their carriages followed.
A magnate of some
sort was shut alone in a brougham, in the care of footman and coachman
with deeply silver-banded hats; there were a few military and civil
riders, and there was distinctly a young man in a dog-cart with a groom,
keeping abreast the landau of three ladies in mantillas, with whom he
was improving what seemed a chance acquaintance. Along the course the
public park gave way at times to the grounds of private villas; before
one of these a boy did what he could for us by playing ball with a
priest. At other points there were booths with chairs and tables, where
I am sure interesting parties of people would have been sitting if they
could have expected us to pass.
VIII
The reader, pampered by the brilliant excitements of our American
promenades, may think this spectacle of the gay world of Seville dull;
but he ought to have been with us a colder, redder, and sadder evening
when we had the Delicias still more to ourselves. Afterward the Delicias
seemed to cheer up, and the place was fairly frequented on a holiday,
which we had not suspected was one till our cabman convinced us from his
tariff that we must pay him double, because you must always do that in
Seville on holidays. By this time we knew that most of the Sevillian
rank and riches had gone to Madrid for the winter, and we were the more
surprised by some evident show of them in the private turnouts where by
far most of the turnouts were public. But in Spain a carriage is a
carriage, and the Sevillian cabs are really very proper and sometimes
even handsome, and we felt that our own did no discredit to the
Delicias. Many of the holiday-makers were walking, and there were
actually women on foot in hats and hobble-skirts without being openly
mocked. On the evening of our last resort to the Delicias it was quite
thronged far into the twilight, after a lemon sunset that continued to
tinge the east with pink and violet. There were hundreds of carriages,
fully half of them private, with coachmen and footmen in livery. With
them it seemed to be the rule to stop in the circle at a turning-point a
mile off and watch the going and coming. It was a serious spectacle, but
not solemn, and it had its reliefs, its high-lights. It was always
pleasant to see three Spanish ladies on a carriage seat, the middle one
protruding because of their common bulk, and oftener in umbrella-wide
hats with towering plumes than in the charming mantilla.
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