The home--that sacred abode of the patriarch, of the Roman citizen,
of the feudal lord, of the very Arab; the holy arch of the Penates,
temple of hospitality, and altar of the family--has completely
disappeared in our great modern centres. The home survives in
the provinces alone. There our house is our own. In Madrid it is
generally the landlord's. In the provinces our house shelters us
for twenty, thirty, forty years at least. In Madrid one moves every
month, or at least every year. Our home has a physiognomy of its
own, which never varies, ever kindly and sympathetic. It grows
old with us; it bears the impress of our lives; it preserves our
footprints. In Madrid the exterior changes every leap year; the
apartments are arrayed in new garments; that furniture is sold which
our contact had consecrated. At home the whole edifice is ours: the
grassy court, the poultry-yard filled with chickens, the high, cheery
terraces, the deep well,--the children's terror,--the monumental
tower, the broad cool, vine-covered summer-house. Here we occupy
a half-flat, paper-lined, and divided into mean apartments, with
no view of the sky, no sun, no air. There we have that neighborly
affection, something between friendship and relationship, which binds
together all the families of one street. Here the man who moves about
noisily above our heads is unknown to us, neither do we know the man
who dies beyond the partition of our alcove, and whose death-rattle
disturbs our sleep. Our provincial home is a cluster of memories, of
local attachments: here the room in which we were born, there the
room where our brother died; here the empty hall in which we played
as children, there the study in which we wrote our first verses. On
the chapter of a column, in the trough of an old ceiling, swallows
have built their nests, and every year the faithful couple fly over
from Africa to hatch a new brood. In Madrid all this is unknown.
And the hearth, that consecrated stone, cold in summer, cold in our
absence, but warm and friendly during the happy winter evenings when
all the children are brought together and grouped about the old
people,--for the colleges have their vacations, the married daughters
bring their little ones home on a visit, and the absent ones, the
prodigal sons, come back to the heart of the family,--where, tell
me, where is this hearth in the houses of the capital? Can we call
a French mantel-piece, made of marble, bronze, and iron, a hearth,
that which one can buy at a store, at wholesale or retail, and can
even hire, if need be? The French mantel-piece is the symbol of home
in a great city. People of Madrid, that is your hearth,--a hearth
subject to the changes of fashion, a hearth which is sold when it is
old, which can be moved from room to room, from street to street, and
which can even be pawned in an emergency.