Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/311

 admit a carriage. On the left there were stables for horses and cows. On the right, kitchens and store-rooms, and sleeping-rooms for the servants. Between these a winding flight of stone steps leading to the upper floor, ascending which one reached a square landing lighted by a lantern which was suspended from the ceiling. Tall, whitish plaster figures of saints standing in the corners gave this room a spectral effect. From there one entered a vestibule opening into various corridors to the right and left, and immediately in front was a reception-room called the “sala de las cabezas”—salon of the heads—so called because each of the four corners was ornamented with a huge plaster-head representing some mythological figure. There was something uncanny about these large, empty suites of rooms, in each of which it was said that a duel, or a murder, or something else terrible, had taken place. The windows were all guarded with heavy iron bars to protect the house against robbers. The gate was carefully locked and fastened with a crossbeam every night for the same purpose. When I asked whether such precautions were needed, the answer was that indeed they were; and when one warm evening I wished to take a walk on the grounds, the Perrys begged me to desist, because it would not be safe, for suspicious human shapes had been repeatedly seen stealthily moving in the shrubbery after nightfall. I obeyed, although those gruesome stories seemed to me slightly imaginative. But some time later, after I had left Spain, I learned that an attaché of the Legation, Mr. Irving van Wart, who then lived with the Perrys, was actually attacked and robbed by footpads at the entrance of the “Quinta” when he came home alone and on foot one night.

The “Quinta” was characteristic of Spain in another respect. The trees and shrubberies on the grounds could not live, nor would the kitchen garden be productive, without