roasting, steaming town on a hilltop; and at last, seemingly exhausted, it stopped at BOABDIL, when he left Granada, had his Cordova. troubles; but at least he did not have to rise before dawn, dress by candlelight, and eat a hurried breakfast served by unwashed waiters in an unaired dining-room, in order to catch train that started just early enough to make itself a nuisance, just late enough to meet the ull fury of the day's heat. And for us, who had learned to love Granada's beauty, it was tragic to see only its ugliness at the last-its streets gray and deserted, and strewn with dead dogs; for the scattering of poison seems to be the Spanish policeman's chief duty, his easy method of preventing hydrophobia. And the station was full of hideous beggars, and Granada's last outlying hill to face the carriage window was crowned by the unlovely façade of the Jesuits' new buildings. A DEAD-AND-ALIVE CITY. FROM the station we drove through a staring white suburb, past the well-whitewashed walls of the bull-ring, to the Fonda de Oriente. It was still early in the afternoon, the sun fierce, the light blinding- the hour when all summer we had been sleeping and dreaming in the Alhambra's halls and the Generalife's gardens. Remembering their loveliness, and hoping for new beauty like it, we could not stay in the dull hotel bedroom, though with its tiled floor it was fairly cool and clean, and we went out into the town. Silence hung over it like a pall. Every winding street in the labyrinth beyond the Paseo was empty; not a living creature in sight, only once in a while a beggar, who rushed from some spot of shade to assail us; all the low, white houses, with their iron-barred windows, were tight shut; the place was abandoned and desolate, its silence unbroken by sound of toil or traffic. Was this really the Cordova of Musa and Abderrahman, the Cordova once called the Bagdad or Damascus of the West, whose streets were ever alive with the clang of arms, the pomp of processions, the clatter of students going to and from the schools, whose name was a synonym for wealth and power, for culture and industry-the world-famous Copyright, 1896, by THE CENTURY Co. All rights reserved. Again the old names greeted us-San Fernando, Loja, Antequera; again at each station we heard the cry of «Water! water!» from the women waiting to sell it and the travelers thirsting to drink it; the landscapes grew less and less green, until we reached Bobadilla, where we changed cars for the North and came into a worse simoom than ever blew over Sahara. Slowly crept the train between endless stretches of gray, dusty olives, or wide, treeless, brown fields, with here and there a 1 See Lights and Shadows of the Alhambra,» in THE CENTURY for June. town, with its scientists and merchants and women doctors? It was as if a plague had fallen suddenly upon the town, and left not one man, woman, or child to tell the tale. At last a turn in the white street brought us to the golden wall of the cathedral, about which cluster so many Moslem and Moorish memories. We walked up and down the four sides of its huge square. Had we been in the proper humor, we could have read its history, as we walked, in the horseshoe arch, the Gothic shrine, the modern bit of scaffolding, that, with their black shadows, told in strong relief upon its golden bareness. Instead, we were busy hunting for an open gate, but all were locked. And so on we went with our weary tramp, out upon the Moorish bridge across the Guadalquivir. It was refreshing to see a river with water in it, even if it straggled among sand-banks and lost itself in shallows. And here was a little life. Two or three men were actually bathing, an old Moorish mill serving them as bathhouse. There was a hooded shrine in the middle of the bridge, and we stood under it in the shadow, looking back to the low domes and the one tall bell-tower rising above the golden walls, and to the town, so large in its DRAWN BY JOSEPH PENNELL. ང་མ་ HOUSE FRONT IN CORDOVA. emptiness, so small for the hundreds of thousands who once lived within it. A herd of swine, driven straight out of «Don Quixote,» came toward us in a pillar of dust, and we fled before them back to the mosque. Suddenly the town stirred, the gates opened, and a crowd of men and women, water-carriers, crept out from shady places, and we went with them into the court. Africa, they say, begins as soon as the Pyrenees are crossed; but Spain, to us, never seemed so African as that afternoon in the court of Cordova's cathedral, with its dazzling sunlight and black shadows, its drooping oranges and swaying, gorgeous palms. At the central fountain the brown-faced women, resting their water-jars on their large hips, the brown-limbed, half-naked children, were Moors, degenerate descendants of the men who made Cordova's fame and greatness. The children began to beg clamorously, imperiously. They were worse than the dustshrouded swine, and we turned into the mosque. A delicious sense of coolness met us at the door. The twilight fell upon our eyes like a caressing hand. Unseen priests were somewhere chanting languorous vespers. But the huge interior, with its low, double arches of checkered red and white, looked like a railway-station of an «Arabian Nights» dream. When we walked down the long, shadowy, interminable aisles, we came to chapels barbarously splendid, to Moslem holy places of elegant simplicity, and from each one sprang a jingling-keyed sacristan, or a guide, to drive us away from all this beauty, and to send after us, as we left, a muttered curse. Lost in the midst of the arches, like a clearing in the forest, is the walled-in choir, as big as a church, the work of the Christian architect, which incensed even the Austrian Charles, who, at Granada, had been so complacent in his own vandalism. An old, half-lame priest in white surplice hobbled up and down one aisle after another, and we sat in a far corner, to which we had escaped for a few minutes, watching him, listening to the languid chant, indifferent to Murray, to legend, history, architecture-steeping and stupefying ourselves in the cool darkness after the long day's glare and glitter. When, toward sunset, we walked back from the mosque to the hotel, losing ourselves over and over again in alleys to which a calle of Venice is a boulevard, the streets were a trifle more lively. In front of occasional houses men leaned against the low grilles of the windows, talking to people within, «eating iron,» Cordova's sole occupation. And at this hour the town belched forth beggars, and every boy demanded to be our guide. But it was unaided we found our way, now to the beautiful doorway of a plain, yellow-washed house standing in some silent, remote little square, and now to an old Moorish courtyard, its grace ful arches disgraced and dishonored; now to an angle in the street overlooked by a high balcony gay with Moorish tiles; to a church hot and sweltering, as if it had never had time to cool, the silks and jewels of Christ and the Virgin gleaming from halfseen altars; or to hanging gardens of palms as luxuriant as they should be in the town where was planted the first palm that ever grew from Spanish soil; or to whatever chance loveliness there was in the monotonous perspective of low, white houses. Nor did we need a guide to show us the way to the café, where we drank the most delicious cooling drink that was ever yet made. It is worth while to be thirsty in Spain; for its helada, or crushed ice flavored with lemon or orange or banana, is the daintiest device with which this thirst could be quenched, and there is no town in Spain where it is to be found in such perfection as at Cordova. But you must be fairly boiling to appreciate it. DRAWN BY JOSEPH PENNELL. In the evening, after dinner, about eight o'clock, we drew chairs out upon our little balcony above the Paseo. Listless groups had gathered about its cafés. Two gipsy children, as black as negroes in their scant white shirts, with persistent hands and voices were carrying on Spain's one flourishing business; but it was not a stimulating sight, and, tired out with the day's journey, we went at once to bed. It must have been some two or three hours later when we were awakened by a loud crash of cymbals and blast of trumpets. Our first thought was that soldiers were marching THE COURT OF ORANGE-TREES, CORDOVA. through the town, and we hurried to the window to see. Below, a great mass of people were seated under the palms. Open carriages were passing up and down on each side, and men on horseback. Very smart nurses, with great bows of ribbon on their heads, had brought wide-awake babies out for an airing. Great trucks and vans of merchandise rumbled by. Workmen were about. Half-way down the Paseo a band had just begun to play. The cafés were ablaze with light, their tables crowded to overflowing. Cordova at midnight had come to life. The air was hot and close, used up by that vast multitude, and the dust, stirred by their ceaseless march, choked us where we stood. It was hopeless to try to sleep again, and we waited by the window. Of a sudden a bell sounded loud above the voices of the crowd. At once the band was hushed, carriages were stopped, the people on the chairs under the palms were on their feet, and not a man but stood, hat in hand. We looked to the end of the Paseo, for everybody was looking that way. From out the doors of the Moorish minaret-crowned church came a procession of men in white surplices, with flickering candles and tall lanterns, and a priest carrying the sacrament, under its golden veil, to the dying. Men who a moment before had been drinking fell upon their knees, and we could hear nothing but the tinkling bell and the murmur of a low chant, as the priest walked slowly on between the rows of kneeling people, praying there in the starlight under the palms. And so in Spain to-day, as yesterday, does life in a moment change from fooling to prayer, as the shadow of death passes by, only to return to its folly as readily when the shadow has passed. Once the priest had gone back to the church, and the doors were shut, the music, louder than ever, went on where it had left off, carriages rolled on, and horsemen pranced after them. There was no sleeping any more. We dressed and packed our bags, and when in the first dawn the band went away, and the last few stragglers were going home, and a few peasants were coming in with their donkeys, and cafés were being shut, we took our places in the hotel coach, and drove off to the station in time to catch the express from Madrid to Seville. BEAUTIFUL SEVILLE. THE landlord at the Hôtel de Paris was very patient and good-humored with us, though we walked him all over his own house before we chose a room that opened upon a small, dark, well-like court, full of palms and orange-trees, and with a fountain. He seemed delighted when he found that we were satisfied. «You know," he told us, "I always say that strangers who come to Seville in the summer time must be mad.>> Yet only in the summer time does one see the true character of the country, and more especially of Seville. The town was as hot as, if not hotter than, Cordova; all its stock amusements were off for the time. There were no gipsy dances, no bull-fights; but nothing could have been gayer and more animated than the mere aspect of the place. Its narrow alleyways, where the flowerladen balconies almost met above our heads, were lined with houses shining white, or pale rose, or green or gold, in the sunlight. The market-places were at all hours crowded with chattering and laughing peasants, while the air, perhaps, was cooled by a fountain playing in the center. The shops opened, Eastern-like, without windows, upon the streets, their wares tumbling out almost at one's feet. Hardlya green square but had a gaudy little booth at each corner, where old men or women sold fresh water and sweet, iced drinks. No matter amusing, pictorial, or dramatic. Now it was a wonderful church or convent or hospital, with fine flamboyant doorway, and romantic associations; or again it was a garden of palms, a high mirador aflame with roses, a dark interior with oxen in the far shadows, a long arcade making a frame for the Moorish wall of the cathedral mosque; and always it was a long train of mules in gorgeous trappings, coming and going, or resting in a narrow street and under the shade of a high wall with, as like as not, a row of potted flowers on its top. The busiest streets and squares kept cool and dim under awnings. On the whole, I think it was these awnings that made Seville so charming in August. There had been a few in Cordova. I have been to more than one town which raises a similar protection against Provençal sunlight; but I have never come across them when they were as elaborate, as general, and as effective as in Seville. In the narrow streets they stretched from housetop to housetop at each end, dropping a great inclosing wall of canvas so low as just to escape the head of the high-saddled |
