Then, tired of flying, they settled down on the rusty iron balconies,
adding to the old building a white fluttering decoration, a rustling
garland of feathers. In the middle of the square a marble swan, with its
neck violently stretched toward the sky, threw out a jet, whose murmur
seemed to heighten the impression of icy cold which he felt in the
shadow.
Renovales began to walk, crushing the frozen crust that cracked under
his feet in the shady places. He leaned over the circular iron rail that
surrounds a part of the square. Through the curtain of black branches,
where the first buds were beginning to open, he saw the ridge that
bounds the horizon; the mountains of Guadarrama, phantoms of snow that
were mingled with the masses of clouds. Nearer, the mountains of Pardo
stood out with their dark peaks, black with pines, and to the left
stretched out the slopes of the hills of the Casa de Campo, where the
first yellow touches of spring were beginning to show.
At his feet lay the fields of Moncloa, the antique little gardens, the
grove of Viveros, bordering the stream. Carriages were moving in the
roads below, their varnished tops flashing in the sun like fiery mortar
boards. The meadows, the foliage of the woods, everything seemed clean
and bright after the recent storm. The all-pervading green tone, with
its infinite variations from black to yellow, smiled at the touch of the
sun after the chill of the snow. In the distance sounded the constant
reports of shotguns that seemed to tear the air with the intensity that
is common in still afternoons.
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