Spain, v. 2 (of 2) by Edmondo De Amicis

Author:Edmondo De Amicis [Amicis, Edmondo De]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783337988579
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Bod Third Party Titles
Published: 2020-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

Cadiz is the whitest city in the world; and it is of no use to contradict me by saying that I have not seen every other city, for my common sense tells me that a city whiter than this, which is superlatively and perfectly white, cannot exist. Cordova and Seville cannot be compared with Cadiz: they are as white as a sheet, but Cadiz is as white as milk. To give an idea of it, one could not do better than to write the word "white" a thousand times with a white pencil on blue paper, and make a note on the margin: "Impressions of Cadiz." Cadiz is one of the most extravagant and graceful of human caprices: not only the outer walls of the houses are white, but the stairs are white, the courts are white, the shop-walls are white, the stones are white, the pilasters are white, the most secret and darkest corners of the poorest houses and the loneliest streets are white; everything is white from roof to cellar wherever the tip of a brush can enter, even to the holes, cracks, and birds' nests. In every house there is a pile of chalk and lime, and every time the eagle eye of the inmates spies the least spot the brush is seized and the spot covered. Servants are not taken into families unless they know how to whitewash. A pencil-scratch on a wall is a scandalous thing, an outrage upon the public peace, an act of vandalism: you might walk through the entire city, look behind all the doors, and poke your nose into the very holes, and you would find white, only and always and eternally.

But, for all this, Cadiz does not in the least resemble the other Andalusian cities. Its streets are long and straight, and the houses are high, and lack the patios of Cordova and Seville. But, although the appearance is different, the city does not appear less interesting and pleasant to the eye of the stranger. The streets are straight, but narrow, and, moreover, they are very long, and many of them cross the entire city, and so one can see at the end, as through the crack in a door, a slender strip of sky, which makes it seem as if the city was built on the summit of a mountain cut on all sides in regular channels: moreover, the houses have a great many windows, and, as at Burgos, every window is provided with a sort of glass balcony which rises in tiers from story to story, so that in many streets the houses are completely covered with glass, and one sees scarcely any traces of the walls. It seems like walking through a passage in an immense museum. Here and there, between one house and the next, rise the graceful fronds of a palm; in every square there is a luxuriant mass of verdure, and at all the windows bunches of grass and bouquets of flowers.

Really, I had

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