were, on the whole, a little fatter than necessary; but their voices
were soft and their dress and jewels, even so early in the day, nicely
elaborate. All his interest was directed to the Cubans present; other
travellers, like--or, rather, unlike--himself, Americans, French and
English, planning in their loud several tongues the day's excursions,
or breakfasting with gazes fastened on Hingray's English and Spanish
Conversations, Charles carefully ignored.

He felt, because of the depth of his own implication, his passionate
self-commitment, here, infinitely superior to more casual, to blinder,
journeyings. He disliked the English arrogance, the American clothes,
and the suspicious parsimony of the French. Outside, in the main
corridor of the hotel, he paused undecided; practically no one, he
saw, in the Parque Isabel, was walking; there was an unending broad
stream of single horse victorias for hire; but he couldn't ask any
driver he saw to conduct him to the heart of the Cuban party of
liberty.

The strongest of all his recognitions was the fact that he had no
desire--but a marked distaste--for sightseeing; he didn't want to be
identified, in the eyes of Havana, with the circulating throng of
the superficially curious. In the end he strolled away from the
Inglaterra, to the left, and discovered the Prado. It was a wide
avenue with the promenade in the center shaded by rows of trees
with small burnished leaves. There, he remembered, was where the
Escobars lived, and he wondered which of the imposing dwellings, blue
or white, with sweeping pillars and carved balconies and great
iron-bound doors, was theirs. He passed a fencing school and
gymnasium; a dilapidated theatre of wood pasted with old French
playbills; fountains with lions' heads; and came to the sea. It
reached in an idyllic and unstirred blue away to the flawless
horizon, with, on the rocks of its shore, a company of parti-colored
bath-houses. There was an old fort, a gate--which, he could see,
once formed part of the city wall--bearing on its top a row of
rusted and antiquated cannon. Slopes of earth led down from the
battery, and beyond he entered a covered stone way with a parapet
dropping to the tranquil tide. After an open space, the Maestranza,
he came to a pretty walk; it was the Paseo de Valdez, with trees,
stone seats and a rippling breeze.

Charles Abbott indolently examined an arch, fallen into disrepair,
erected, its tablet informed him, by th