Every one employs his time, most conscientiously, in doing nothing. Gallantry, cigarettes, the manufacture of quatrains and octaves, and especially card-playing, are found sufficient to fill up a man's existence very agreeably. In Granada you see nothing of that furious restlessness, that necessity for action and change of place which torments the people of the north. The Spanish struck me as being very philosophical. They attach hardly any importance to material life, and are totally indifferent about comfort. The thousand factitious wants created by the civilization of northern countries, appear to them puerile and troublesome refinements. Not having to protect themselves continually against the climate, the advantages of the English _home_ have no attractions in their eyes. What do people, who would cheerfully pay for a breeze or a draught of air, if they could obtain such a thing, care whether or not the windows close properly? Favoured by a beautiful sky, they have reduced human existence to its simplest expression: this sobriety and moderation in everything enables them to enjoy a large amount of liberty, a state of extreme independence; they have time enough to live, which we cannot say that we have. Spaniards cannot understand how a man can labour first in order to rest afterwards. They very much prefer pursuing an opposite course, and I think that by so doing, they show their superior sense. A workman who has gained a few reals leaves his work, throws his fine embroidered jacket over his shoulders, takes his guitar and goes and dances or makes love to the _majas_ of his acquaintance, until he has not a single _cuarto_ left; he then returns to his employment. An Andalusian can live splendidly for three or four sous a day; for this sum he can have the whitest bread, an enormous slice of water-melon, and a small glass of aniseed, while his lodging costs him nothing more than the trouble of spreading his cloak upon the ground under some portico or the arch of some bridge. As a general rule, Spaniards consider work as something humiliating and unworthy of a freeman, which, in my opinion, is a very natural and very reasonable idea, since Heaven wishing to punish man for his disobedience, found no greater infliction than the obliging him to gain his daily bread by the sweat of his brow. Pleasures procured, as ours are, by dint of labour, fatigue, and mental anxiety and perseverance strike Spaniards as being bought much too dearly. Like all people who lead a simple life approaching a state of nature, they possess a correctness of judgment which makes them despise the artificial enjoyments of society. Any one coming from Paris or London, those two whirlpools of devouring activity, of feverish and unnaturally excited energy, is greatly surprised by the mode of life of the people of Granada,--a mode of life that is all leisure, filled up with conversation, siestas, promenades, music, and dancing.