VIIIGRANADA

THE MOSQUE, CORDOVA.LA PUERTA DEL SOL, TOLEDO.

work. The jeweller’s art is the hardest to kill of all, except the cook’s. They make nice jewelry here still; the pastry and the orange flower sweetmeats of Cordova are the best I have eaten in Spain. Of all the arts of Cordova, the cook’s and the jeweller’s alone survive! Man is still greedy; woman—may I say it?—still vain.”

“But wasn’t the University the great thing after all?” said Patsy.

“Right! You can’t say it too often or too loud. When you hear the Jews abused, speak up, tell the old story over again. In the Dark Ages, when in the rest of Europe, Greece and Rome were forgotten, asleep, seemingly dead, the spirit of Athens and of Rome was alive here in Cordova. Art, philosophy, science,—our great inheritance from the older civilizations—were held in trust for you and me right here by the Jews and Arabs of Cordova.”

“That won’t be forgotten while Dante is read.” Patsy quoted a line from the Inferno:

“Averrois che il gran commento feo.”

“No, six words from Dante give a man a patent of nobility in the Republic of Letters that outlives any title an emperor confers. Well, that Averroes, that same Hebrew Jew whom Dante met along with those other Cordovans, Seneca and Lucan, in the place of the sighing, unbaptized spirits, livedand wrote his great Commentary on Aristotle here in Cordova. He probably walked through this court every day, he washed perhaps in that fountain; ate oranges, may be, from those trees—how should I know the life of an orange?”

“Those two men,” said J. to me, “would rather talk about a thing any day than see it.” So we left Patsy and the Argentino reconstructing old Cordova, and went to look at the Mosque.

Inside we soon lost ourselves in a forest of columns, with long aisles running in every direction. Every path we chose led to beauty. The columns are of many different marbles, porphyry, jasper, Africano, alabaster, verde antique; of all styles, and many periods. We found some from the old Roman temple of Janus; some with smooth polished shafts; some twisted, with Roman, Arab, Byzantine or Visigothic capitals. The mosque has been compared to the bed of Procrustes,—if the column was too short, it was lengthened by adding a base; if too long, it was sunk into the ground. Whatever the columns might have been originally, they now are all of the same height, and serve to hold up the beautiful double arches that support the roof.

We found our way to the Mihrâb, a wonderful little octagonal chapel. The roof is a shell hollowed from a single block of marble, the walls areof marble finely carved. A deep groove is worn in the pavement by the knees of the pilgrims who made the tour of the Mihrâb seven times, for in those days a pilgrimage to Cordova was as good as one to Mecca.

“Los Moros que te labraroncapilla del Zancarrónmerecián ser Cristianos.”

“That means the Moors that made you, chapel of the bare bone, deserved to be Christians,” said Patsy, coming up behind us. “Bare bone, because one of Mohammed’s shin-bones is supposed to have been worshipped here.”

“Si hoy mismo resucitaranaqui en Cordoba los moroscada cual se iba á su casa.”

the Argentino capped thecopla. “That means if to-day the Moors here in Cordova rose from the dead, each could go to his own house,—because the houses are so little changed, I suppose, and because their descendants have kept the keys.”

As if in answer to the challenge, there came slowly towards us, down a narrow aisle of flanking columns, two tall Moors, dressed all in white. They had left their shoes at the door of the Mosque; each carried a prayer rug. They entered the small,seven-sided chapel that leads to the holy of holies, and placing their rugs upon the ground stood under the pineapple dome with bowed heads. There we left them on the threshold of the Mihrâb, in the Mosque of their fathers.

“Haven’t we seen the impossible thing?” cried Patsy. We were outside the church in the hot sunshine, having left those grave Moors undisturbed in the shadowy mosque.

We had seen the impossible thing, the only thing worth seeing, as the only thing worth doing. Since the Conquest of Granada, it is as difficult to see a Moor in Spain as to meet an Iroquois in Broadway, but,—we had not dreamed them! They were real Moors in the suite of the envoys of the Sultan of Morocco at the Algeciras Conference, who had taken advantage of a few days recess, and come up to see Cordova.

As we stood absorbed in thinking of those Moors, whose red morocco slippers lay before us on the steps, we did not notice what was happening just behind us.

“Off with your hats, heretic Jews!” The words were hissed in Patsy’s ear,—he stood nearest the church door; his hat was knocked off his head. “Take that, and that, and that!” He was hit in the face three times with a fan by a small lady in black satin.

The Argentino drew us quickly aside, as a procession of priests came out of the door. One carried something that was hidden by the rich vestment hunched over his shoulders and covering his hands.

“They are taking the sacrament to some sick person,” the Argentino explained. At that moment Don Jaime, who had come up without our seeing him, tried to pour oil upon the troubled waters.

“These are strangers, Señora, they did not know that his divine majesty was about to pass.”

The little old lady was nothing appeased; she gave us one last furious look, and muttering “Accursed heretic Jews!” followed the priests with the sacrament.

“That’s the same spirit that more than once has drenched this city in the blood of its best people,” said the Argentino. “In Abd-er-Rahman’s time the church of St. Vicente that stood here, on the site of the Temple of Janus, was divided between Christians and Musselmans. They worshipped under the same roof till Abd-er-Rahman bought the Christians out and built this Mosque. The Christian priests left the church peaceably, in procession, carrying the pictures and relics of the saints. Afterwards the Mohammedan Marabouts and the Christian fanatics stirred up all the strife; they areequally responsible for the throat slitting, burning, and torturing; there’s not a pin to choose between them. That old lady would send us to the stake to-day if she could. Priest and woman, the old allies! Do you know, Señor, that the future of Spain depends upon the education you give your women.” His eyes flashed as he asked Jaime the question. The Don looked back at him with withering scorn.

“Theladiesof Spain receive the education best suited to them,” he said gravely.

“They know how to use their fans,” said Patsy; his nose had begun to bleed. “That I should be assaulted for the first time in my life by a little old lady with a fan,—wonderful! I will say she’s the livest thing I’ve seen in Cordova.”

“You saw who she was?” said J. “The lady with the silver curls who didn’t want to pay duty on the ham, and who gives bread to the beggars of Cordova every Saturday.”

GATE OF JUSTICE, ALHAMBRA.

“Who’s there?”

“People of peace.”

Encarnacion opened the door of the bell tower just a crack. Though the sun had not set, it was already dark inside the watch-tower of the Alhambra. The walls are six feet thick; the windows, narrow slits on the winding stair, let in very little light. Encarnacion carried a classic brass lamp for olive oil. She shaded the flame from her eyes with a long, hairy hand, and the light shining through showed how thin it was. Maria, the younger sister, as grim looking, though more timid in her bearing, stood behind, peering over Encarnacion’s shoulder.

“It is the youngcaballeroand his friends,” shewhispered. Encarnacion threw the door wide open, the two sisters smiled hospitably upon us like a pair of kind ogresses.

“But come in.”

“Come in.”

They echoed each other as if they were singing a perpetual duet.

“They are welcome.”

“Welcome.”

“Will they be pleased to enter?”

“To enter!”

We followed the sisters to a square room with enormously thick walls. A range was built into one corner, a charcoal fire smouldered under a tiny grate, where something that smelt very good bubbled in an earthenware pot. Four cages of canaries hung against the wall. A brindled cat stole in behind us, licked its whiskers, fixed fierce, unwinking eyes on the birds. Maria threatened him with her finger.

“Bad little cat! Who killed the young robin in the myrtle hedge? And now you make eyes at these? He knows too much to touch them; he looks and looks at them, and then goes out and chases the wild birds.”

In the middle of the room stood a round worktable covered with sewing. A jacket, half cut out of red cotton, lay near a pair of shears. From an

COURT OF LIONS, THE ALHAMBRA.

GARDEN OF THE GENERALIFE, GRANADA.

opening in the dark, vaulted ceiling over the worktable, dangled a long knotted cord.

“That is the rope of thecampana de la Vela!” said Encarnacion.

“Is it true that it is you who ring the bell of the Vela?”

“Yes, once every half hour, from eight o’clock in the evening till four in the morning, we ring the bell in the watch-tower.”

“You sit up all night to do it? Isn’t it dreadfully cold?”

“Yes, it is often very cold. In winter we have a fire.” Encarnacion drew aside the chintz curtains that hid the lower part of the table, and showed a copper brazier covered with a wire netting that stood underneath.

“We kindle the charcoal, put our feet close to the brazier on this wooden shelf, and wrap ourselves up in heavy shawls and hoods. We manage very well, we are so used to it.”

“What do you do with yourselves through the long winter nights? How do you pass the time?”

“There is always plenty of work; we take in sewing. Sometimes one of us reads aloud to the other.”

“Do you two live here quite alone?”

“Sometimes our brother is with us, not always,” sighed Encarnacion. “I have been the portressof the Torre de la Vela since the night the tower was struck by lightning and our father and mother, now in glory, were killed.”

“Now in glory were killed!” echoed Maria.

“What a terrible thing! When did it happen?”

“Long and long ago,—the year Maria made her first communion. We were waked by a great crash. The tower shook, the bell rang as never before, there was a thick smoke. It was easy for us to escape, we slept below; our brother slept above, near our parents. He saved his life by clapping a towel over his mouth, and creeping down-stairs on his hands and knees.”

“On his knees,” Maria crossed herself. “Virgin mine! May the Lord receive them into Paradise in their shoes!”

“The bell gives the signal for opening the sluices,” Encarnacion went on; “it regulates the irrigation of the vega. Each piece of land has its hour for letting on the water. On still nights you can hear the bell thirty miles away.”

High up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains over Granada, the Darrow, a mountain torrent flowing down from the eternal snows on the summits, is caught, tamed, and led off into small channels that spread, like the veins of a man’s body, all over the vega. Moors’ work this; perhaps the greatest part of their legacy to Spain, for water

WINDOW, TOWER OF CAPTIVE, ALHAMBRA.

is wealth. Thanks to the Moors, the vega of Granada is the garden of the Peninsula; the hemp grown here is the finest, the olives and grapes are the best. The land bears three crops a year in succession,—wheat, beans and corn. Part of it is now given over to the new sugar beet industry; the beets grown here are enormous. The soil is light and clean; you will not find a stone in a whole field. The regulation of the complicated system of irrigation, the life blood of Granada, is in the hands of Encarnacion and Maria. To live in a tower, of all others in a tower of the Alhambra, and spend your life helping to make Granada green and beautiful, seems a pleasant existence, even if it be a lonely one. To wake when others sleep, and sleep when all the world’s awake, always seems a hard fate.

“Your birds must be a great company to you,” I said to Maria.

“Claro.We raise them ourselves. Would you like to see the little ones? We keep them in our bedroom where it is warmer.”

“Do me the favor,” Encarnacion relighted the lamp, and showed the way up the heavy stone stairway.

The neat upper room where the sisters slept had three beds. In spite of the thick whitewash on the walls, we could still make out the graceful lines of the old Moorish arches and windows. A palmbranch, a crucifix, and a chromo of the Madonna of Lourdes appearing to Bernadette, hung between the beds. At one end of the room was a long table with the breeding cages of the canaries, whose loves and nurseries the sisters of the tower guard so tenderly.

“See this little one;” Maria put her face close to the cage and made a little singing sound. “He’s getting strong now; he was weakly at first, and I thought we should lose him. It would be a pity; his father is our best singer.” The canaries, all in a flutter at being waked up, chattered and scolded at her.

“Maria will take them up to see the view,” said Encarnacion; “if they will excuse me, I will go down in case some one else should call.” I am afraid Encarnacion knew we liked Maria best.

Down in the town of Granada the bells were ringing like mad, the nightingales were singing in the Duke of Wellington’s elms, that shade the long, steep road leading from the town to the red city of the Alhambra, perched high above it. At the foot of the tower was a carpet of wild flowers, anemones, wild callas, and many other blossoms I did not know.

“Is the snow always there?” J. asked, pointing to the Sierra Nevada.

“I was born in the tower,” said Maria;“I have lived here all my life, and I have never seen those mountains without snow. That is thecampana de la Vela,” she pointed to a huge bronze bell hanging in the turret. “You should see the tower on the day after New Year. How many girls come up to see the view that day! They believe, foolish ones, that she who rings the bell on the second of January will get a husband before the year is over.” Maria smiled, with grim close-shut lips. Had she ever been weak enough to try the charm? For Encarnacion it was unthinkable.

“When Don Alfonzo was here we asked him to ring the bell. Though he laughed very much, he would not. From what we hear, he will be married before New Year all the same.”

In the Torre de la Vela they know all that is going on. It was growing dark; the stars were pricking through the blue; down in the city of Granada the lights seemed to reflect them.

“Is that the Gypsy quarter?” I asked Maria. I could just make out doors like the one leading to Aladdin’s cave, in the face of a hillside far below.

“Yes, that is the Albaicin. You have been there?”

“Not yet; to-morrow we shall go to see some Gypsy dancing.”

Maria shrugged scornful shoulders. “Take carethey don’t pick your pockets. The Gitanos are great thieves; they are taught to steal from the time they are babies. You may like what you will see. When there are no ladies,” she held up her hands in horror, “their dances are not to be imagined or described. Do not let him go by himself.” She looked at Patsy, leaning over the parapet absorbed in the view. “They are deceitful hussies! The dances they dance when men go alone are very different from what you will see!”

“That would be a hot walk without the shade of those trees,” said Patsy. “Pleasant that we should remember the Iron Duke in Spain most of all for his elms. Who loves his fellow men, plants trees. The Englisharecivilized, confound ’em! The longer you’re in Europe, the more you have to think of England as the Great Friend.”

There was no excuse to linger longer. The sisters had invited us to sup, and we had declined.

“Go you with God,” said Encarnacion, she came with us to the door. “To-night when you hear thecampanade la Vela, think of Maria and me in the tower.”

“In the tower,” echoed Maria over her shoulder.

The next day we drove to the Albaicin, by the road of the Sacred Mountain. The base of the mountain is honeycombed with gypsy cave dwellings. The caves are built, or rather excavated,

GIPSIES OF GRANADA.

at four different levels, and entered from rough terraces. The gypsy settlement seemed a sort of primitive community, like those from which Tangiers and Naples must have developed into the terraced cities they are to-day. Higher up the mountains are the sacred caves where hermits once lived. On the summit is a large church and a religious house.

“That old gentleman Don Jaime gave me the letter to,” said Patsy, “told me that the priests who live up there are no end of swells. They can’t ‘get in’ on anything but merit, not even royal patronage. They must show that they have the goods; must pass a stiff examination. Each one has his separate establishment, with his own house and garden and servants, and draws a pension of from three to five thousand pesetas a year. Most of them are great ‘orators’; they are sent for from all over Spain to preach, and jolly well paid for it. They always get twenty-five dollars a sermon, and have been known to get forty! Spain’s the place for priests; when I take orders I shall come here to live!”

The gypsy King met us at the entrance of his cave; a swart hulk of a man, with the voice of a bull and bold piercing eyes. Behind him stood his son, looking just as the King must have looked at twenty. The boy had a mop of coarse black hair—the King’s was iron gray—low forehead, strong white teeth, that curious veiled eye that later in life grows fierce and bright; body, hands, feet, exquisitely turned, color a rich olive, the look of race that is better than beauty, and the glow of youth that is best of all. It was small wonder the two ragged girls plaiting straw in the dust of the hot yellow road looked at him with longing eyes.

The door of the cave, fitted flat against the hillside, seemed to lead into the bowels of the earth. The cave, literally scooped out of the mountain, was divided into four decent whitewashed rooms, comfortable and clean enough. We went directly from the road into the largest; it was of fair size, with rough beams running across the ceiling and with a tiled floor. We were expected; great preparations had been made for our visit. A row of rush-bottomed chairs stood against the wall. Beautifully polished copper saucepans of many sizes were placed on a shelf, with some wild peonies stuck in a beer bottle. I somehow fancied that the saucepans would be for sale if we took a fancy to them. A small inner room, perfectly dark, led from the living room; it had a bed with a white crocheted quilt. On the left of the entrance was a cave room that served as a kitchen; on the right, a sort of property room,—where half a dozen women and girls with powdered faces and fresh flowers in theirhair were waiting. The eldest, a fierce old woman with a beak like a parrot’s, dusted a chair for me.

“This is my house,” she said. Pointing to the King, “He is my son, these are all my family.” She seemed surprised at my asking if there was any other cave as good as hers.

“No,” she said, “this is the best; cool in summer, warm in winter, and clean, as you can see.”

The musicians, the King’s son and another youth with oiled hair and clean new jackets, took their places, twanged their guitars and thefiesta flamancabegan. First a dance by two women, while the others sat by, clapping their hands, tapping with their feet, keeping time to the music.

“More power!” cried the King.

“Dalé, dalé,” droned the chorus. The guitars twanged louder, the hand-clapping redoubled. Little by little the dancers woke up. The youngest woman was sixty, the oldest girl ten. This was a little disappointing to Patsy, though they all did their best and gave us good measure. The children were evidently students being carefully trained; the old women were all good artists, and intent on preserving and handing down the traditions of their art,—but the thing was somehow curiously academic! The old mother took a tambourine from the wall and shook out the music from it in finestyle. “Tire yourselves!” she cried. After the second dance, she handed a tray with glasses of wine. Each succeeding dance was better than the last. The best of all was the one the old woman gave us at the end. Only once was there an approach to what Maria had hinted at. A woman with a bad face gave us a Jaleo, a gross, wriggling dance with unpleasant contortions of the body, wonderful as an exhibition of skill and strength, but not quite decent, and lacking the grace, the beauty, and the dignity of the old woman’s performance.

“Haven’t we had enough?” said Patsy, at the end of half an hour. “You saw those men tip the wink to our coachman as we passed? The whole village is on its good behavior. We are not to be shocked, annoyed, or begged from; it’s all put down in the bill we must pay the ruffian King for protecting us from his tribe, preventing us from seeing the real thing and giving us this fake show.”

Patsy was all wrong—because he was disappointed in the age of the performers! You can see a young and handsome Spanish dancing girl in any music hall in Madrid. The gypsy cave in the mountainside, where the dancers of the past and the dancers of the future meet, was worth a trip to Granada!

LA PUERTA DEL VINO, GRANADA.A COURT OF THE ALHAMBRA.

Of course we spent most of our time in Granada at the Alhambra. Some things must be experienced to be understood. Falling in love is one, Niagara Falls another, going down a toboggan slide a third, the Alhambra a fourth. The old simile of the oyster came to mind as freshly as if we had invented it,—just as every pair of young lovers imagine they have invented love! The heavy walls are the outside of the oyster; the fairy courts and halls painted with the tints of rainbow, dawn, sea, and moonlight are the inside of the shell. The pearl? In the room of the Two Sisters the winter apartment of the sultana, I had a vision of Irving’s Linderaxa. I could not remember how he described his pearl of the harem, but the face I saw or dreamed of as I sat in that fairy palace was the fairest woman’s face I ever saw. Her skin was like warm ivory, her hair an aureole of flame, her eyes, gray stars, her smile, the smile of the imperishable child.

I asked Patsy if he was disappointed in the Alhambra.

“Yes,” he said, “disappointed the right way. After the Acropolis, it is the best thing I ever saw. The lovely color, the movement of it all! Will you tell me how any people could invent a written language as decorative as this?” We were in one of the great halls looking at the Cuffik inscriptionsthat form one of the most fascinating and characteristic of the wall ornamentations.

“It is all based on Persian art, but it is even more joyous, don’t you think? You know the Koran discourages, if it does not forbid, the representation of any living creature in art. That is like the ‘Thou shalt make no graven image.’ Man and beast are practically ruled out of Arab art. Do you miss them? I don’t. After the gross use of men and animals,—remember the great bearded bullmen of the Assyrians, and the hawk and cat headed gods of Egypt,—this endless variation of leaf and flower and geometric design is refreshing. Why it is like a vegetarian diet to a sailor man who has had scurvy from living on salt beef.”

The guardian, who had long tracked us, here buttonholed J., and poured out a flood of familiar information. We listened mechanically, as he talked, until he said something we had not heard twenty times before.

“Last week two Moors from the Algeciras Conference were here. I myself took them about. They showed no enthusiasm. In this room the older one said to me, ‘These are sentences from the Koran,’ as if I did not know that before! In spite of all their pretended indifference, I knew very well what those Moors were feeling. It is a very deceitful race; they always hide their emotions.” Theguardian spoke as scornfully of the Moors as Maria had spoken of the gypsies.

“Do you notice how they all dislike what they call deceit? The Spaniard is a truthful person, and honest. I don’t know why it is surprising, but after some of the countries we have traveled in, it comes like a shock!” said Patsy.

A long straight path of gold sand between two lines of tall, black cypresses leads to the old Moorish garden of the Generalife, near the Alhambra. Every other tree is clipped square at the top, the alternate one towering to a pointed spire. There is always a sound of gliding waters; in the early morning and evening, when the birds’ matins and lauds are sung, you can hear the nightingales and the merles. In the patio of the cypresses, under the shade of immemorial trees, is a great sheet of still green water like a vast chrysophrase, where you can study the cloud shadows, or your own reflection—if you are handsome—like Narcissus, or watch the greedy gudgeon and gold fish devour the bread you throw them. We passed through a long, flower-bordered path with a thicket of laurel, aloes and pomegranate for a background. A hundred tiny jets of water, like white aigrettes, waved among the green, and lost themselves in the shrubbery. We climbed the long Stairway of the Cascades, cheered by the babble of the littlestreams of water that run down the tops of the balustrade on either side. In the mirador at the top we rested, and looked down on the wonderful garden with its terraces, cedars, clipped myrtle hedges, thousand and one fountains.

“The Bankshires are only beginning here; in Seville the rose madness was at its height,” said Patsy. “We have travelled with the rose; we couldn’t have managed better if we had tried.”

From the mirador you see the Sierras with the eternal snow fields glistening on their summits. “The Moors certainly understood the use of water,” said J. “I have never seen anything quite so good as this garden even in Italy.”

There was music in the air, the rushing sound of water from those melting snows cunningly led down the mountainside and set here to dance and sing, to cool the heat and beguile the leisure hours of long, hot, summer days. Patsy watched with fascinated eyes a joyoussaldadoreof water leaping and singing under the shade of an oak.

“Water is to these people of the south what fire is to us northerners,” he said. “They are the two living elements, and they both dance. Dancing is the natural expression of joy in life; it is copied from dancing spray and dancing flame. David was quite right to dance before the ark. I had a

RETABLO, CARVED IN HIGH AND LOW RELIEF.Roldan

Shaker nurse who danced with me when I cried; I suppose that is why I’m so fond of it.”

Granada cathedral is so hemmed in with trumpery little buildings that it is impossible to get an impression of it as a whole. The mushroom growth will have to go. Each succeeding tourist wave sweeping over Europe, as the Goths and Vandals swept before them, sweeps away some such trash, and uncovers hidden gems of architecture. The interior of the cathedral, though over ornate, has some splendid architectural effects, and is rich in every sort of treasure ecclesiastical. I remember a curious white marble statue of the Virgin with a black marble cloak, and a very charming painted wood group of St. Anne, St. Joachim and Mary, a good example of one of the arts you must come to Spain to see. Painted wood statuary, wrought iron work, ecclesiastical embroidery and—dancing have all been carried farther in Spain than anywhere else in Europe. Montañes, Roldan, and Alonzo Cano, succeeded in making their painted wood statues and bas-reliefs as dignified as if they had worked in bronze or marble. Just as Luca della Robbia did with terra cotta. There is a polychrome carved retablo of the Entombment in Seville, by Roldan, that is a true masterpiece of sculpture. The outer figures are modelled in such high relief they seem almost free; thosein the middle distance are in ordinary high relief, the more distant in low, almost flat relief; the background is a painted wood panel. This does not sound encouraging, but the material a masterpiece is made of is of little consequence; it may be wood, marble, iron, gold or woven wool,—if a master uses it, a masterpiece is produced.

As I was sketching the wonderful wrought iron screen that shuts off the tombs from the main part of the chapel royal, I heard two women’s voices: “You have made a mistake, I think. The tombs of Ferdinand and Isabel are on the right,” said an alert, gray-haired woman.

“Thank you; I know,” said a clear young voice. The last speaker, caught red handed in the very act of laying flowers on a tomb, was annoyed. She saw that I, too, looked with disfavor on the alert gray-haired lady with the guidebook, and by mutual consent we made acquaintance beside the tomb of Juana la Loca, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel, and her husband, Philippe le Bel.

“Poor things!” said the girl who had laid the flowers between the two marble figures lying side by side.

“Poor things! Tell me their story if you remember it.”

“They were married when Juana was seventeen,and Philippe eighteen. She was very pretty, but he was the handsomest man in Europe. They only had each other ten years; even then they were not allowed much peace! At first they lived at his court in Brussels where they were very happy; life was not quite so strict and straight laced as at the Spanish Court. Isabel was a great queen, but I don’t think she could have been a nice mother. She sent a priest to be Juana’s confessor, a grim Spanish bigot. Phillippe laughed at him so much that Juana refused to confess to him. That was the beginning of all their troubles! The priest came back to Spain and told tales, set her mother against Juana. When she came home, to be with her mother when her child was born, Isabel tried to prevent her returning to her husband,—locked her up. Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

She spoke as if it was happening now; her face was flushed; she clinched and unclinched her hand.

“But they couldn’t keep Juana; she was like a raging lioness; they had to let her go back to her husband. Then Isabel spread the report that Juana was mad,—and made arrangements in her will to prevent her ever reigning. Juana wouldn’t have cared about that; all she wanted was to be let alone, to have a little peace and happiness in her life. After Isabel’s death, those two poor thingsmade their great mistake,—they came back to Spain. Somebody who was jealous of their happiness poisoned Philippe. Nobody knows whether Juana’s father Ferdinand was responsible for the murder or the Inquisition. I think it was the Inquisition; those cruel inquisitors did not want anybody to be happy, and Philippe was too liberal, too open-minded to suit that terrible Cardinal Jimenez. Juana and Philippe were at Burgos at the time. When it was all over, the friends who were with her at the deathbed told Juana that her husband was dead.

“No,” she said, “not dead, asleep!” You see, then, she really did go mad. They had Philippe embalmed and put in a leaden coffin; from that day Juana was never separated from his body. Wherever she went she took it with her; for twenty years she travelled all over the country with it. I saw her coach, the first that ever came to Spain, in Madrid. In those days, when royalties travelled, they stopped at convents or monasteries, if there was no royal residence near. Poor Juana was so jealous she would never go into a convent, for fear the nuns might look at her beloved! Philippe dead had his pages and his suite just as if he had been alive. Finally, Juana was shut up at Tordesillas. There she had the coffin placed in a chapel leading from her room, where she could always see it.

MOORISH COLUMNS IN THE ALHAMBRA.

Here is a photograph I bought of Pradilla’s picture of Juana.”

The picture shows the sad procession on a windswept hillside outside Burgos just before dawn. The coffin stands on an iron bier, with two wax candles at the head and foot. A priest reads the service from his book. Juana’s ladies stand or sit exhausted on the ground. A group of pages and gentlemen in furred dresses stand near a fire kindled in the open. Juana, in a long black dress, stands beside the coffin looking down. “Dead? No, asleep!” she seems to say.

“For forty-seven years Juana watched beside the body of her husband. He died at twenty-eight; she lived to seventy-four. Their son, Charles V, gave Juana as fine a tomb as Isabel’s. I think she deserved it. A great lover is as rare as a great queen. Come with me and see the vault. That old battered coffin is Philippe’s, the very one Juana carried about with her. I touched it the other day. It made it all seem so real!”

We were standing by the royal vault, looking down through a grating at the coffins, when a fair young man with blue eyes strolled through the chapel and joined us.

“Haven’t you been here long enough, Joan?” he said. “Let’s get out of this stuffy old church.”

“All ready, Philip; I was only waiting for you.” She looked at him with adoring eyes, smiled kindly at me, and went off leaning on his arm. They were as pretty a young couple as you could see, and their names were Philip and Joan! It could hardly have been by chance that they were here. I fancied that the bride had contrived to include a pilgrimage to the tomb of the true lover, Joan the Mad, in their wedding journey.

WE sailed from Algeciras for what Don Jaime called our “little crusade to Morocco.” The Don could not go with us; he was called to Madrid, he said, on important business. Patsy, who went down to Algeciras a day or two before us, had something to tell about the Conference then in session. The Moroccan delegates had arrived at night, bringing the ladies of their harems with them. They had landed between two and three in the morning, so the few curious persons waiting on the dock only caught an unsatisfactory glimpse of muffled figures passing from the vessel to the waiting carriages. Private houses had been prepared for the Moorish delegates; most of the Europeans, and Mr. Henry White, the American delegate, stayed at the Hotel Maria Cristina.

At the opening meeting of the Conference on the sixteenth of January, 1906, the president, the Duc d’Almodovar, declared that the reforms to be introduced into Morocco must be based on the tripleprinciple of the sovereignty of the Sultan the integrity of his states, and the open door. The poor Moroccan delegates, who did not want any reforms at all introduced into their country, were only allowed to read their little speech at the second session, and as it was in Arabic, nobody understood much of it.

We had a perfect day for our trip across the Straits of Gibraltar from Europe to Africa. It took two hours and a half, and seemed much shorter than crossing the English channel. At one point we could see at the same time the white houses of Tangiers, and the gray Moorish fortifications of Tarifa, the southernmost point of Europe. The currents are very strong between the two coasts. A French steamer lay wrecked upon the rocks close to Tarifa Point light. The sea was like a silver shield. On the Spanish coast there were long stretches of tawny sands among the gray and purple rocks, with here and there an ancient Saracen watch-tower.

“Trafalgar Bay lies in that direction,” said Patsy, pointing to the northwest. “Nelson must have looked at these yellow cliffs, as he lay dying on the deck of the Victory, thinking, perhaps, of the white cliffs of England.”

The winds that blew over Trafalgar Bay caught the great Admiral’s last command, “Anchor,

TANGIERS.

Hardy, anchor,” and his last request whispered to his trusty Captain, “Kiss me, Hardy!” If you ever sail that way, listen to the wind whistling in the shrouds. If you have ears to hear such things, you may catch the echo of that whisper.

The coast of Africa, as we approached it, was not more arid than the opposite shore.

We anchored in the bay far out from Tangiers, a white town set like a pearl on the edge of an emerald crescent. Near the right point of the crescent, Tangiers climbs up the hill from the yellow sea sands to the green heights of the foreign embassies and villas; at the extreme point stands the lighthouse. America cleared the Mediterranean of Barbary pirates; and the great European powers built the lighthouse, as they have built the post-offices, the hospital, and every other modern thing in Morocco. While waiting for the health officers, we watched the fish darting through the clear, beryl-green water. Presently a lighter with a load of bulls closely wedged together drew up alongside the steamer. A rope was passed round the horns of two of the bulls, and they were hoisted on board in pairs, in what seemed a cruel manner. The whole weight came on their horns, their necks were stretched out, their poor, frightened eyes, blank with terror haunt me still. They made no noise; most of them hung limp;a few struggled and only succeeded in kicking each other.

We and our luggage were rowed ashore in a small boat. The sea was alive with half naked bronze men in sacking bournouses, who waded back and forth, carrying enormous loads of terra cotta tiles from a lighter to the land. On the pier a splendid person in a long blue garbardine, white turban, and yellow slippers, met us with a card and a bouquet of flowers.

“My name is Ali,” he said; “I am your friend.” He laid his hand to his lips, then to his forehead with the grave and lovely salutation of the East.

Ali led us before three magnificent, white-robed Moors, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the custom-house, smoking long chibouks. These officials paid no attention to us; indeed, they seemed unconscious of our presence. The two younger men went on with their conversation; the elder, kingly as Saul, looked silently across the sea towards that lost paradise of his race, Andalusia. Our luggage was laid down at their feet; they did not even glance at it. After a few minutes, the youngest Moor took his pipe from his mouth, and waved his hand slightly in our direction.

“All right,” said Ali, “good custom-house, yes?”

The bearers took up our portmanteaus, and we passed into the narrow crowded street where no vehicle can go, and where Ali had hard work to protect me from the surging crowd of heavily laden porters and donkeys. It was market day. Ali piloted us through a maze of narrow, twisting lanes, and markets thronged with strange figures: Moors in white bournouses, Jews in black caftans, negro slaves with gashed faces, wild looking hill men with blue eyes, who looked at us more fiercely than all the rest. The buyers and sellers outshrieked each other. The long sharp cry of the water-carriers, the braying of donkeys, the yelling of man, woman and child, mingled with the hammering of the tin and coppersmiths in the bazaars.

In the vegetable market we met a tall old Sheik with a long beard, dressed in a lovely pea-greenjellabiyah, with turban to match, and salmon colored undergarments. Ali salaamed to him.

“Health be with you!”

“And with you be peace!” The Sheik’s voice was like distant thunder. He carried a large basket. The seller of vegetables received him respectfully, if less cordially than Ali. The Sheik cast a critical eye over the vegetables, then laid his hand on a bunch of young carrots, a string of fresh onions, some ruby radishes and some long green beans.Whatever he touched, the dealer put into his basket, saying, “Take it,” each time more faintly.

“God increase thy goods!” said the Sheik, when he had considerably diminished them by half filling his own basket.

“And thy goods, also,” answered the dealer cheerfully, as the old man pottered off to the butcher’s, next door.

“He is holy man,” said Ali; “they all give to him.”

The butcher’s gifts—a skinned sheep’s head, with awful staring eyes, and other gruesome things, were too horrid to look at. We waited till the Sheik passed on to the bread sellers, a group of white shrouded women sitting against a wall. They were as carefully veiled as if they had been young and lovely ladies. Each had a cushion before her with flat loaves of bread. When the middle one gave the Sheik a loaf, there was the rattle of bangles, and a glimpse of a hand that might have belonged to the Cumaean sibyl.

Outside the market, in the midst of the mad hurly-burly, there appeared an incarnation of that Oriental calm we had begun to believe the Moors had left behind them in Cordova. Down the middle of an evil-smelling lane, a man on horseback rode slowly towards us. The squalling crowd made way for him, flattening itself against the wall.

“Welcome!” said Ali, as the stranger passed in the odor of sandalwood.

“Twice welcome,” answered the horseman. He was fairer than many Spaniards; his brown beard and moustache were beautifully combed and curled, he had a high aquiline nose, eyes like dark jewels, thin pencilled eyebrows. He was dressed all in white; hissulhamof finest wool had a silk braid round the edge, and tassel hanging from the hood drawn over his head. He turned his horse to avoid us. Except for that slight motion of laying the reins against the animal’s neck—the action showed a slim brown hand with an ancient turquoise ring—he gave no sign of having seen us. It is a sign of Arab as of British breeding, not to look too much at strangers.

“That was an Arab gentleman,” said J.

“Now I know just how Abd-er Rahman looked!” murmured Patsy.

The horse was a spirited chestnut, with a skin so thin the veins showed under it, and delicate, proud feet that he planted scornfully in the unspeakable filth of the lane. Later, in Blacksmiths Square, where we lingered to watch two men shoe an old white mare—one held her foot, the other put on the shoe—a servant led the chestnut up to the smith. The man stopped work, patted the chestnut and kissed it, while his helper fed it withlittle cakes. Though there were a dozen horses and mules waiting their turn to be shod, the chestnut took precedence over all.

Ali explained this favoritism. “That horse, he have been to Mecca,” he said. “That make him very holy.”

For all his holiness the homely smell of the chestnut’s scorched hoof when the hot shoe touched it was in no wise different from the old white mare’s!

Seeing the horse fitted with a set of new shoes reminded J. and Patsy that while in Morocco they must each buy a pair of real Morocco slippers. Ali had a friend who was a slipper seller, so we hunted him up in the quiet, back street where he lived. We found him in a tiny bazaar like a big box, hung with slippers of every size and color. The others were so long choosing their shoes, the street was so deserted, that I ventured to walk on alone. From an open doorway came the drone of childish voices reciting a lesson; an Arab school was in session. Twenty very little boys sat upon the floor, rocking slowly back and forth, reciting verses from the Koran in a sort of singsong chant. The schoolroom was a dark, dank hole, its only light coming from the door. Dazzled by the blinding light of the street, I did not at first see the schoolmaster, a young man of eighteen. He sat near the door, writing outsentences from the Koran with a reed pen, in a large book like a ledger. He had just reached the bottom of the page, had dipped his reed in a fascinating bronze inkstand worn in his sash, and I was silently admiring his beautiful Arabic handwriting, when he looked up and saw me. A tiny boy, who could not have been more than three, just then smiled at me. He was such a bonny child, so like one of the children at home, that I kissed my hand to him.

“Christian dog!” The master’s rattan whizzed through the air, and came down whack, whack, on each side of the boy’s head. Then all the little children scowled and bit their thumbs at me. The master tore the neatly written page from the book, crumpled it up, threw it at me, and retreated across the room, the book under his arm, cursing me as I believe I was never cursed before.

At that moment Ali came running up, and after a few angry words with the schoolmaster, hurried me away.

“They no like you,” he said. “I am your friend; I take care of you.”

The page had been torn from the book because the shadow of a Christian had fallen upon it! After that, Ali became as my shadow. When I wanted to stop and admire the tower of the great Mosque,—it has a poor, far-away likeness to the Giralda—he would not let me stay, telling me that it was not safe for Christians to linger near the mosque or the tombs of saints.

The Great Socco, the big market-place outside the city gate, is the most Oriental thing you can see without going to India. The bazaars of Constantinople, the Muski of Cairo, even the streets of Jaffa, are European compared to it. The Socco lies on a bare hillside; it is shut in with walls, and entered through a handsome Moorish gate. A restless stream of camels, asses, beggars, traders, fruit-sellers, veiled women, jugglers and snake charmers pulses ceaselessly back and forth. A caravan from Fez was starting that day, another had just arrived. The camels snarled and grunted as the drivers unloaded their bales of merchandise and dates. Near the gate, in a corner of comparative peace, an audience had collected about the one-eyed story teller. He beat his drum as we came up. Ali gave him a piece of silver, and we were allowed to stand on the edge of the crowd and listen to the tale of the Fisherman and the Genie told in Arabic with dramatic gestures, and listened to with breathless interest.

There was an encampment at one end of the Socco, extending outside the gate along the road to Vez. The tents were small and poor, the people who lived in them wild, and, at the same time, wan

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