dusty, fly-blown street, where I
stayed long enough to buy a melon (I was always buying a melon in Spain)
and put it into my cab before I descended the terrace to revere the
house of Cervantes on its own level. There was no mistaking it; there
was the bust and the inscription; but it was well I bought my melon
before I ventured upon this act of piety; I should not have had the
stomach for it afterward. 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.

IX

[Illustration: 11 THE HOUSE IN WHICH PHILIP II. WAS BORN]

Now I look back and am glad I had not consciously with me, as we drove
away, the boy who once meant to write the life of Cervantes, and who
I knew from my recollection of his idolatry of that chief of Spaniards
would not have listened to the excuses of Valladolid for a moment.
All appeared fair and noble in that Spain of his which shone with such
allure far across the snows through which he trudged morning and evening
with his father to and from the printing-office, and made his dream
of that great work the common theme of their talk.