f Segovia. There was a glitter, almost a glare,
of Ritz-like splendor, and the rates were Ritz-like, but there the
resemblance ceased. The porter followed us to our rooms on our
arrival and told us in excellent English (which excelled less and less
throughout our stay) that he was the hall porter and that we could
confidently refer all our wants to him; but their reference seemed
always to close the incident. There was a secretary who assured us that
our rooms were not dear, and who could not out of regard to our honor
and comfort consider cheaper ones; and then ceased to be until he
receipted our bill when we went away. There was a splendid dining-room
with waiters of such beauty and dignity, and so purple from clean
shaving, that we scarcely dared face them, and there were luncheons
and dinners of rich and delicate superabundance in the menu, but of an
exquisite insipidity on the palate, and of a swiftly vanishing Barmecide
insubstantiality, as if they were banquets from the _Arabian Nights_
imagined under the rule of the Moors. Everywhere shone silver-bright
radiators, such as we had not seen since we left their like freezing
in Burgos; but though the weather presently changed from an Andalusian
softness to a Castilian severity after a snowfall in the Sierra, the
radiators remained insensible to the difference and the air nipped the
nose and fingers wherever one went in the hotel. The hall porter, who
knew everything, said the boilers were out of order, and a traveler who
had been there the winter before confirmed him with the testimony that
they were out of order even in January. There may not have been any fire
under them then, as there was none now; but if they needed repairing now
it was clearly because they needed repairing then. In the corner of one
of our rooms the frescoed plastering had scaled off, and we knew that
if we came back a year later the same spot would offer us a familiar
welcome.

But why do I gird at that hotel in Granada as if I knew of no faults in
American hotels? I know of many and like faults, and I do not know of a
single hotel of ours with such a glorious outlook and downlook as that
hotel in Granada. The details which the sunlight of the morrow revealed
to us when we had mastered the mystery of our window-catch and stood
again on our balcony took nothing from the loveliness of the moonlight
picture, but rather added to it, and, besides a more incredible scene of
mountain and plain and ci