a long absence, the places familiar to their youth.
Above the scattered growth the ancient church of Los Jeronimos, with its
gothic masonry, outlined against the blue sky its twin towers and ruined
arcades. The wintry foliage of the Retiro served as a background for
the white mass of the Cason. Renovales thought of the frescos of
Giordano that decorated its ceilings. Afterwards, he fixed his attention
on a building with red walls and a stone portal, which pretentiously
obstructed the space in the foreground, at the edge of the green slope.
Bah! The Academy! And the artist's sneer included in the same loathing
the Academy of Language and the other Academies--painting, literature,
every manifestation of human thought, dried, smoked, and swathed, with
the immortality of a mummy, in the bandages of tradition, rules, and
respect for precedent.

A gust of icy wind shook the skirts of his overcoat, his long beard
tinged with gray and his wide felt hat, beneath the brim of which
protruded the heavy locks of his hair, that had excited so much comment
in his youth, but which had gradually grown shorter with prudent
trimming, as the master rose in the world, winning fame and money.

Renovales felt cold in the damp valley. It was one of those bright,
freezing days that are so frequent in the winter in Madrid. The sun was
shining; the sky was blue; but from the mountains, covered with snow,
came an icy wind, that hardened the ground, making it as brittle as
glass. In the corners, where the warmth of the sun did not reach, the
morning frost still glistened like a coating of sugar. On the mossy
carpet, the sparrows, thin with the privations of winter, trotted back
and forth like children, shaking their bedraggled feathers.

The stairway of the Museo recalled to the master his early youth, when
at sixteen he had climbed those steps many a time with his stomach faint
from the wretched meal at the boarding-house. How many mornings he had
spent in that old building copying Velasquez! The place brought to his
memory his dead hopes, a host of illusions that now made his smile;
recollections of hunger and humiliating bargaining to make his first
money by the sale of copies. His large, stern face, his brow that filled
his pupils and admirers with terror lighted up with a merry smile. He
recalled how he used to go into the Museo with halting steps, how he
feared to leave the easel, lest people might notice the gaping soles of
his boots that