At any rate, we were so far from tired that
after luncheon we walked to the Garden of the Generalife, and then
walked all over it. The afternoon was of the very mood for such a visit,
and we passed it there in these walks and bowers, and the black cypress
aisles, and the trees and vines yellowing to the fall of their leaves.
The melancholy laugh of water chasing down the steep channels and
gurgling through the stone rails of stairways was everywhere, and its
dim smile gleamed from pools and tanks. In the court where it stretched
in a long basin an English girl was painting and another girl was
sewing, to whom I now tardily offer my thanks for adding to the charm of
the place. Not many other people were there to dispute our afternoon's
ownership. I count a peasant family, the women in black shawls and the
men wearing wide, black sashes, rather as our guests than as strangers;
and I am often there still with no sense of molestation. Even the reader
who does not conceive of a garden being less flowers and shrubs than
fountains and pavilions and porches and borders of box and walls of
clipped evergreens, will scarcely follow me to the Generalife or outstay
me there.
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