is artless warbling, listening and waiting for some
articulate air, and still disappointed; and when at last I asked him
what it was he sang--"Oh," cried he, "I am just singing!" Above all, I
was taken with a trick he had of unweariedly repeating the same note at
little intervals; it was not so monotonous as you would think, or, at
least, not disagreeable; and it seemed to breathe a wonderful
contentment with what is, such as we love to fancy in the attitude of
trees, or the quiescence of a pool.

Night had fallen dark before we came out upon a plateau, and drew up a
little after, before a certain lump of superior blackness which I could
only conjecture to be the residencia. Here my guide, getting down from
the cart, hooted and whistled for a long time in vain; until at last an
old peasant man came towards us from somewhere in the surrounding dark,
carrying a candle in his hand. By the light of this I was able to
perceive a great arched doorway of a Moorish character: it was closed by
iron-studded gates, in one of the leaves of which Felipe opened a
wicket. The peasant carried off the cart to some out-building; but my
guide and I passed through the wicket, which was closed again behind us;
and, by the glimmer of the candle, passed through a court, up a stone
stair, along a section of an open gallery, and up more stairs again,
until we came at last to the door of a great and somewhat bare
apartment. This room, which I understood was to be mine, was pierced by
three windows, lined with some lustrous wood disposed in panels, and
carpeted with the skins of many savage animals. A bright fire burned in
the chimney, and shed abroad a changeful flicker; close up to the blaze
there was drawn a table, laid for supper; and in the far end a bed stood
ready. I was pleased by these preparations, and said so to Felipe; and
he, with the same simplicity of disposition that I had already remarked
in him, warmly re-echoed my praises. "A fine room," he said; "a very
fine room. And fire, too; fire is good; it melts out the pleasure in
your bones. And the bed," he continued, carrying over the candle in that
direction--"see what fine sheets--how soft, how smooth, smooth"; and he
passed his hand again and again over their texture, and then laid down
his head and rubbed his cheeks among them with a grossness of content
that somehow offended me. I took the candle from his hand (for I feared
he would set the bed on fire) and walked back to the sup