But now we
had come to see another sort of leisure--the famous leisure of fortune
and fashion driving in the Delicias, but perhaps never quite fulfilling
the traveler's fond ideal of it. We came many times to the Delicias in
hope of it, with decreasing disappointment, indeed, but to the last
without entire fruition. For our first visit we could not have had a
fitter evening, with its pale sky reddening from a streak of sunset
beyond Triana, and we arrived in appropriate circumstance, round the
immense circle of the bull-ring and past the palace which the Duc de
Montpensier has given the church for a theological seminary, with long
stretches of beautiful gardens. Then we were in the famous Paseo, a
drive with footways on each side, and on one side dusky groves widening
to the river. The paths were lit with gleaming statues, and among the
palms and the eucalyptuses were orange trees full of their golden
globes, which we wondered were not stolen till we were told they were of
that bitter sort which are mostly sent to Scotland, not because they are
in accord with the acrid nature of man there, but that they may be
wrought into marmalade. On the other hand stretched less formal woods,
with fields for such polite athletics as tennis, which the example of
the beloved young English Queen of Spain is bringing into reluctant
favor with women immemorially accustomed to immobility.
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