In his declaration before the magistrates he says that his
literary reputation procured him the acquaintance of courtiers and
scholars, who visited him in that pitiable abode where the ladies of his
family cared for themselves and him with the help of one servant maid.
They had an upper floor of the house, which stands at the base of a
stone terrace dropping from the wide, 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.
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