Part 11

“He was telling me last night,” said Patsy, “about the time Queen Isabel II came to Cordova. He was only a boy then, but his father was at a banquet the Marquis de Benemeji gave for her at Quita Pesares--Away Cares; isn’t that a good name for a garden? The old gentleman must have plied a better knife and fork than the Don, for Jaime remembers to this day the way his father rolled up his eyes when he told them about the good things they had to eat. _Aroz a la Valenciana_--baked rice with fish, quails, green peas and artichokes; saddle of veal larded and roasted with aromatic herbs and manzanilla, rice boiled in cream with the name of the best guest at each table traced in powdered cinnamon, _natilla_, a wonderful kind of cream, and _ojaldres_,--a sort of pastry, light and brittle as a butterfly’s wing, which they eat with chocolate. When they had eaten and drunk all that they could, the Queen said good-bye and started to go. What do you suppose she found at the door? A brand new coach, Andalusian style, with eight splendid _caballos antigrados_ (Cordovan horses with yellow skins marked like tigers) harnessed Andalusian fashion, with silver bells and silken tags. The Queen hopped into the coach and drove away. She took it back to Madrid, where, the Don thinks, we can see it still in the royal stables. He says Cordova has traditions to live up to.

“When the Queen’s son, Alfonzo XII, came here, the days of coaches were gone by. The Grandee at whose house the King stayed had the railroad tracks laid through the streets to his door, so that the King should not have the trouble of driving from the station to the house.”

“Speaking of railroads,” said J. “I think I’ve had enough of Cordova.”

“So have I, this season,” Patsy agreed. “Next year, when I make the tour of all the _ferias_ of Spain, with my friend the Mountebank, I shall come back to Cordova and enter the Contest of Poets.”

From that moment till we left, I spent every waking hour in the Mosque, the thing best worth seeing in Cordova. Outside, it looks more like a fortress than a sanctuary. It has battlements, towers and buttresses quite in character with the militant Mahommedan religion, and hopelessly out of character with the Christian. It is grim, forbidding, and tremendously impressive all at once! The gates, the gates alone, give a hint of the beauty inside! The light, interlaced, horseshoe arches resting on slender columns, and the rich mosaic over the Puerta Arabe are like a foretaste of a feast. In the splendid court of Oranges, where the trees are planted in long aisles (they originally were a continuation of the aisles of the Mosque), there are five fountains, and fifty beggars and guides. As we were making a bargain with the youngest guide to keep the others at bay, the Argentino came up and offered his services in the place of a guide.

“I have had them all,” he said; “and picked their brains like a corbie.”

We sat on a bench and watched the women drawing water at the fountain while the Argentino--he spoke English rather better than any of us--and Patsy talked like two Trappists, newly absolved from the vow of silence!

“Think of the Mosque first as the most perfect thing left of the Cordova of the Caliphs, the city of Abd-er-Rahman, whom you tell me you saw cross the old bridge the night you arrived. I have not been so fortunate, though I have had a sense of him more than once sitting here in his court. If it were not for the Mosque, the story of Moorish Cordova would be to me as the Thousand and Second Story of Scheherezade. Even so, I can hardly believe it. This, a city of a million inhabitants--think of it! Those silent, God-forsaken streets full of people, the place fairly humming with business. Thousands of looms weaving stuffs, tissues, carpets. You know what Cordova leather was? It has never been equalled. As to their blacksmiths, their silver and goldsmiths, there are none like them in the world to-day that I know.”

Patsy took a brown paper parcel from his pocket. “Here are some rather nice bits I have picked up.” He showed a close silver chain, supple as a serpent, and a fascinating pair of gold filigree earrings studded with small emeralds.

“You’re in luck. These look like real old Cordova

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, lived and 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 are of 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 labraron capilla del Zancarrón merecián 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 resucitaran aqui en Cordoba los moros cada cual se iba á su casa.”

the Argentino capped the _copla_. “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 are equally 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.

“The _ladies_ of 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.”

VIII

GRANADA

_Quiero vivir en Granada_ _porque me gusta el oir_ _la campana de la Vela_ _quando me voy a dormir._

I like to live in Granada Because it pleases me to hear The bell of the Vela When I am going to sleep.

“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 young _caballero_ and his friends,” she whispered. 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

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

“That is the rope of the _campana 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 portress of 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

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 palm branch, 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 the _campana 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 care they 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 English _are_ civilized, 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 the _campana_ de 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,

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 their hair 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.”