“Now for it,” thought I.

“But”—­and then he began to talk once more of the wearisome Council of Trent, and I found that his writing in the paper, the offer of the cigar, and the long and prosy harangue were—­what shall I call it?—­mere [Greek text].

By this time the spring was far advanced, the sides though not the tops of the Guadarama hills had long since lost their snows; the trees of the Prado had donned their full foliage, and all the Campina in the neighbourhood of Madrid smiled and was happy:  the summer heats had not commenced, and the weather was truly delicious.

Towards the west, at the foot of the hill on which stands Madrid, is a canal running parallel with the Manzanares for some leagues, from which it is separated by pleasant and fertile meadows.  The banks of this canal, which was begun by Carlos Tercero, and has never been completed, are planted with beautiful trees, and form the most delightful walk in the neighbourhood of the capital.  Here I would loiter for hours looking at the shoals of gold and silver fish which basked on the surface of the green sunny waters, or listening, not to the warbling of birds—­for Spain is not the land of feathered choristers—­but to the prattle of the narangero or man who sold oranges and water by a little deserted watch tower just opposite the wooden bridge that crosses the canal, which situation he had chosen as favourable for his trade, and there had placed his stall.  He was an Asturian by birth, about fifty years of age, and about five feet high.  As I purchased freely of his fruit, he soon conceived a great friendship for me, and told me his history; it contained, however, nothing very remarkable, the leading incident being an adventure which had befallen him amidst the mountains of Granada, where, falling into the hands of certain Gypsies, they stripped him naked, and then dismissed him with a sound cudgelling.  “I have wandered throughout Spain,” said he, “and I have come to the conclusion that there are but two places worth living in, Malaga and Madrid.  At Malaga everything is very cheap, and there is such an abundance of fish, that I have frequently seen them piled in heaps on the sea-shore:  and as for Madrid, money is always stirring at the Corte, and I never go supperless to bed; my only care is to sell my oranges, and my only hope that when I die I shall be buried yonder.”

And he pointed across the Manzanares, where, on the declivity of a gentle hill, at about a league’s distance, shone brightly in the sunshine the white walls of the Campo Santo, or common burying ground of Madrid.