I paid my bill there, which was imagined with scrupulous
fullness to the last possible _centimo,_ and so I may disinterestedly
declare that the Eitz is the only hotel in Madrid where you get the
worth of your money, even when the money seems more but scarcely is so.
In all Spain I know of only two other hotels which may compare with it,
and these are the English hotels, one at Ronda and one at Algeciras. If
I add falteringly the hotel where we stayed a night in Toledo and the
hotel where we abode a fortnight in Seville, I heap the measure of merit
and press it down.
We did not begin at once our insensate search for another hotel in
Madrid: but the sky had cleared and we went out into the strange capital
so uncharacteristically characteristic, to find tea at a certain cafe we
had heard of. It was in the Calle de Alcala (a name which so richly
stimulates the imagination), and it looked out across this handsome
street, to a club that I never knew the name of, where at a series of
open windows was a flare of young men in silk hats leaning out on their
elbows and letting no passing fact of the avenue escape them. It was
worth their study, and if I had been an idle young Spaniard, or an idle
old one, I would have asked nothing better than to spend my Sunday
afternoon poring from one of those windows on my well-known world of
Madrid as it babbled by.
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