At luncheon in our Madrid hotel we had a liberal
choice of eggs in any form, the delicious _arroz a la Valencia,_ a kind
of risotto, with saffron to savor and color it; veal cutlets or
beefsteak, salad, cheese, grapes, pears, and peaches, and often melon;
the ever-admirable melon of Spain, which I had learned to like in
England. At dinner there were soup, fish, entree, roast beef, lamb, or
poultry, vegetables, salad, sweet, cheese, and fruit; and there was
pretty poor wine _ad libitum_ at both meals. For breakfast there was
good and true (or true enough) coffee with rich milk, which if we
sometimes doubted it to be goat's milk we were none the worse if none
the wiser for, as at dinner we were not either if we unwittingly ate kid
for lamb.
There were not many people in the hotel, but the dining-room was filled
by citizens who came in with the air of frequenters. They were not
people of fashion, as we readily perceived, but kindly-looking
mercantile folk, and ladies painted as white as newly calcimined house
walls; and all gravely polite. There was one gentleman as large round as
a hogshead, with a triple arrangement of fat at the back of his neck
which was fascinating.
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