Most other capitals, in such heat, would still have been an inferno of duty, full of damp shopgirls and exhausted clerks. But not here, for Madrid knew when to say No, and draw its shutters against the sun. This, of course, was also the habit in other Spanish cities; but here it had reached a peak of particular genius. For Madrid at that time, if not today, was a city of a thousand exquisite taverns – water-cooled, barrel-lined, and cavernously spacious, cheap and affectionately run, in whose traditional shade the men, at least, spent a half of their waking time.
