We
Thought Our Landlord Might Have So Far Repented As To Put On The Steam;
But He Had Sternly Adhered
To his principle that the radiators were
enough of themselves; and after luncheon we had nothing for it but to
Go
away from Burgos, and take with us such scraps of impression as we
could. We decided that there was no street of gayer shops than those
gloomy ones we had chanced into here and there; I do not remember now
anything like a bookseller's or a milliner's or a draper's window. There
was no sign of fashion among the ladies of Burgos, so far as we could
distinguish them; there was not a glowering or perking hat, and I do not
believe there was a hobble-skirt in all the austere old capital except
such as some tourist wore; the black lace mantillas and the flowing
garments of other periods flitted by through the chill alleys and into
the dim doorways. The only cheerfulness in the local color was to be
noted in the caparison of the donkeys, which we were to find more and
more brilliant southward. Do I say the only cheerfulness? I ought to
except also the involuntary hilarity of a certain poor man's suit which
was so patched together of myriad scraps that it looked as if cut from
the fabric of a crazy-quilt. I owe him this notice the rather because he
almost alone did not beg of us in a city which swarmed with beggars in a
forecast of that pest of beggary which infests Spain everywhere.
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