I Was Not Satisfied With The Outside Of The
House, But When I Entered The Open Doorway, Meaning To Mount
To the
upper floor, it was as if I were immediately blown into the street again
by the thick and
Noisome stench which filled the place from some
unmentionable if not unimaginable source.
It was like a filthy insult to the great presence whose sacred shrine
the house should have been religiously kept. But Cervantes dead was as
forgotten in Valladolid as Cervantes living had been. In some paroxysm
of civic pride the tablet had been set in the wall and then the house
abandoned to whatever might happen. I thought foul shame of Valladolid
for her neglect, and though she might have answered that her burden of
memories was more than she could bear, that she could not be forever
keeping her celebrity sweet, still I could have retorted, But Cervantes,
but Cervantes! There was only one Cervantes in the world and there never
would be another, and could not she watch over this poor once home of
his for his matchless sake? Then if Valladolid had come back at me with
the fact that Cervantes had lived pretty well all over Spain, and what
had Seville done, Cordova done, Toledo done, Madrid done, for the upkeep
of his divers sojourns more than she had done, after placing a tablet in
his house wall? - certainly I could have said that this did not excuse
her, but I must have owned that she was not alone, though she seemed
most to blame.
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