his dress the height of correctness and foppery.
Some rich tourist-woman probably! She was directly opposite Rafael's
bench. He could see that her gloved hand rested on the railing, as she
moved her fan to and fro with an almost discourteous noise. The rest of
her body was lost in the darkness of the gallery. She bent back from
time to time to whisper and laugh with her escort.

Somewhat reassured by the empty appearance of the house, Rafael scarcely
paid any further attention to the orator. He had guessed all that the
man would say, and he was satisfied. The outline of the long answer he
had prepared would not in the least be affected.

The old man was inflexible and unchangeable. For thirty years he had
been saying the same thing over and over again. Rafael had read that
speech any number of times. The man had made a close study of national
evils and abuses, and had formulated a complete and pitiless criticism
of them in which the absurdities stood out by force of contrast. With
the conviction that truth is forever the same and that there is nothing
ever so novel as the truth, he had kept repeating his criticism year
after year in a pure, concise, sonorous style that seemed to scatter the
ripe perfume of the classics about the muggy Chamber.

He spoke in the name of the future Spain, of a Spain that would have no
kings, because it would be governed by itself; that would pay no
priests, because, respecting freedom of conscience, it would recognize
all cults and give privileges to none. And with a simple, unaffected
urbanity, as if he were constructing rhyming verses, he would pair
statistics off, underscoring the absurd manner in which the nation was
taking leave of a century of revolution during which all peoples had
done things while Spain was lying stagnant.

More money, he pointed out, was spent on the maintenance of the Royal
House than upon public education. Conclusion: the support of a single
family in idleness was worth more than the awakening of an entire people
to modern life! In Madrid, in the very capital, within sight of every
one of his hearers, the schools remained in filthy hovels, while
churches and convents rose overnight on the principal streets like
magic palaces. During twenty-odd years of Restoration, more than fifty
completely new, religious edifices, girding the capital with a belt of
glittering structures, had been built. On the other hand, only a single
modern school, at all comparable to t