four corners of the earth, Patsy made acquaintance, over the inkstand,
with the Argentino. He was a tall man with a close-cut, pointed beard
that had been gold and would soon be silver, and fiery brown eyes that
would always be young.
“So you are an American, too?” I heard him say to Patsy. “Are you from
the States?”
“Yes; I took you for a Spaniard.”
“No, I am an American from the Argentine.”
We left Patsy and the stranger plunged in talk. Half an hour later,
Patsy brought his new acquaintance to our room.
“It’s raining so hard we can’t go out,” he whispered; “this is the most
comfortable place in the house--he is a kind of an American--”
“This is ‘a good Son of the Way,’ that is what the Arabs call a
traveller,” said the Argentino, looking at Patsy. “He makes a friend as
a sailor makes a sweetheart, between tides, waiting for his ship to
sail.”
It was pouring now. Beside the noise of the rain on the roof we heard,
every now and then, a strange sobbing sigh.
“Grrr! Isn’t that a creepy noise? If I were not broad awake and looking
at you all by electric light, I should believe those were the ghosts of
the great men of Cordova lamenting the departed glory of their city.”
“I wish they were,” said the Argentino. “They could tell me just where
the old Iberian village stood, when the Phœnicians came punting up the
river and discovered it, just as our people poked up the rivers in
America, and discovered the Indian pueblos.”
“Tell them what you were telling me,” said Patsy. “He has been here ever
so long, and has ferreted out a lot of interesting things about
Cordova.”
“There is not much to tell that you don’t know. The old game of
civilization is going on in the world to-day just as it was then. You
have only to cross the Straits of Gibraltar, and go over to Morocco and
up into the Atlas Mountains to find a Kabyl village very like the
primitive Iberian pueblo the Greeks and Phœnicians found here. The
French may be a little quicker about civilizing Morocco than the
Phœnicians and Greeks were in civilizing the Peninsula, though I doubt
it.”
“You said,” Patsy insisted, “that you had seen some things in a museum
that gave you a pretty clear idea of how they lived in Cordova, when it
belonged to Carthage.”
“I saw some recent finds made in a mound not far from here,” said the
Argentino. “A bust which they call the Lady of Elche that has something
of the early Greek feeling. After seeing these things and reading all I
could lay hands on about them, I came to the conclusion that Cordova
must have been a pretty civilized place under the Republic of Carthage.
The people had gold and silver vessels,--the Greeks have a story that
the anchors of their galleys were gold. They certainly had ivory combs,
for I have seen them, and Greek vases and Celtic pottery--geometric
raised patterns and all--and coins stamped with a winged horse. Then we
know all about their wool, what fine cloth they made, and that famous
scarlet dye of the kermes that ran the Tyrian purple so hard in the
markets of the East.”
“Those markets of the East another republic hankers to supply,” Patsy
put in.
“Take up the white man’s burden and put it on the back
Of every yaller nigger and kick him when he’s slack.
They’ve got to wear our cotton, they’ve got to drink our gin,
And pay our missionaries to save their souls from sin.”
He threw open the window and leaned out.
“It has stopped raining. My wig! do you smell the flowers? I can make
out jasmine, acacia, and mignonette. Spanish flowers seem to grow with
their perfume already triple distilled.”
“They are the most fragrant in the world,” said the Argentino. “Don’t
sleep with your windows open, if you are afraid of headache! Now you
want to go to bed, this Son of the Way and I will say good night to
you.”
A few minutes later Patsy’s laugh, a whiff of the Argentino’s cigarette,
some broken fragments of their talk floated in at the window, as they
walked up and down in the garden outside.
“The original inhabitants of Spain--what they call the Iberians--” said
the Argentino.
“Where did they come from?” Patsy interrupted.
“Nobody knows; they weren’t Aryans. In the Neolithic Age a very dark
race, with long heads, and thick curling hair inhabited the whole
Peninsula--”
“I do not propose going back to the beginning of time to-night;” said J.
as he shut the window. “That boy’s thirst for information--easily
acquired--will get us into trouble yet. Don Jaime comes to-morrow. How
will he and this new friend get along?”
I had already asked myself that question.
* * * * *
“Did the norias keep you awake?” Patsy asked at breakfast the next
morning. “What we heard last night was not the sighs of ghosts, but the
noise of the pumping machines that supply the houses with water!”
Our rooms looked into a walled garden, with flower-beds framed in
geometrical designs, surrounded by nice thick box borders. There was a
superb syringa in full bloom that looked like ivory and smelt like
honey. The jasmines were trained against the wall. The roses were
glorious. In an outer court, where the poultry lived, a patriarchal
fig-tree shaded a row of old-fashioned wooden beehives. Under a pergola
covered by grape-vines stood a tiny house no bigger than a sentry-box;
in the house sat Vicente. His voice waked us each morning with a fierce
but tremulous cry:
“_Andar_, Morisco!”
Close to the sentry-box was the noria. Morisco, a tall mule hitched to a
pole, and blindfolded so that he should not grow dizzy, walked round and
round in a circle, faithfully pumping the water, while Vicente
alternately slept and exhorted him to “go!” The red-haired waiter told
us Vicente’s story. In his youth he had been head gardener on a
Grandee’s estate. For twenty years he had been attached to the hotel. He
was now ninety-five years old. A few months before his wife had died, at
the age of one hundred. Until then, Vicente had lived at home. Now that
there is nobody to cook and wash for him, the proprietor gives him a
room in the hotel, his food, his clothes, a little money for cigarettes;
for his companion, Morisco.
As we entered the garden, Vicente awoke with a start, lighted a
cigarette, and jerked the mule’s bridle.
“_Andar_, Morisco!” The patient mule, who had worked while Vicente
slept, trod his weary round a little faster, the clatter of his hoofs
mingling with the droning creak, creak of the noria.
A brown girl passed from the outer court, where she had been taking down
the washing, half hidden by the pile of linen in her arms.
“_Hé, hé!_ _Basta aqua_, Vicente!” she cried, and went into the hot
laundry with her linen.
“_Muy bien_, Rafaela.” Vicente sneezed, relighted his cigarette, with
trembling hands unharnessed Morisco, and toddled off with him to the
stable. In a few moments the old man came back, and pottered about the
garden, making his tour of inspection. Nothing escaped his wise old
eyes. He crushed a snail that was devouring a velvety pansy, nipped off
an overblown peony, stripped the buds and foliage so ruthlessly from a
fine red carnation that I had to ask him the reason.
“This work should have been done in September, but I was not here then.
We shall have poor carnations this year.” From the look of them--they
were only just coming into bloom--they would have taken a prize anywhere
out of Spain.
“The carnation plant has need of cleanliness like a person. What I take
off is its misery. See, these are nothing but leaves; they do no good,
they only take the strength. These are children; there are too many of
them! Sacrifice these three little buds, and in fourteen days this large
one will make a carnation so big.” He joined his palsied hands at the
finger tips to show me the size. He had thrown some of the “misery”
carelessly on the ground, some he had laid carefully in a pile.
“Those I threw away are nothing but leaves and children. These others
are little plants, you see the difference? I shall plant all these; not
one must be lost. It is so late many will not grow, but I shall get
some good ones. Very soon they will throw out roots, then I shall
transplant them; next season they will bear. The carnation is only good
for three years; the second season is the best. See, this is an old
plant. We will help it to give its last flowers. They will be small, but
of a good variety.” He stirred the earth about the roots, and mixed with
it a trowelful of rich loam.
“One might almost live in a place where they grow such flowers!” J.
began.
“No, one might not!” cried Patsy.
“Vicente has been a famous gardener in his day!” the waiter had said it
more than once. That explains why the pear trees were so well pruned,
the oranges so healthy, why the carnations of Cordova still bloom in my
memory. A peacock strutted down the brick path, hopped on the wall of
the noria, spread the glory of his tail, turned his proud head to show
the sapphire sheen of his neck, and gave his strange cry, “mahor mahor.”
The laundry window was open. We could see Rafaela’s pretty head bent
over her ironing, and catch the words she sang:
_Contrabandista es mi padre,_
_contrabandista es mi hermano,_
_contrabandista ha de ser_
_aquel á quien dé mi mano._
Contrabandista is my father,
Contrabandista is my brother;
Contrabandista he must be
To whom I give my hand.
“The trouble with Cordova is, it is dead and not buried,” said Patsy.
“It may comfort you to know it was the first town in Europe to have
paved streets. I believe they never have been repaved since.” We were
picking our way over the abominable pavement of the Plazuela de Seneca.
A little farther on, near the Seven Corners, is a large house with
carved stone façade, handsome iron gratings, and something distinguished
about it that caught our attention. It stands in a deserted plaza where
the grass grows between the paving stones. For five minutes we had met
nobody, not even a cat or dog. We peeped into the patio. There was no
living thing there except a fountain and a tame quail asleep in a cage.
“The palace of the Sleeping Beauty!” murmured Patsy. We went round
behind the house to explore. The frowsy little street at the back was
fragrant with a smell of new baked bread that made us hungry. Through a
half-closed gate we saw a courtyard full of beggars. An inner door
opened, and the lady of the silver curls whom we had first seen on
Cordova Bridge came out followed by two servants carrying baskets filled
with bread. The beggars formed in line and shuffled past the lady, who
gave a loaf to each and received a blessing in return.
“Bread is given out at this house every Saturday,” said a little
gentleman in a black stock, who was passing. “Last year, when there was
a death in the family, they gave alms for nine days. The _pordioseros_
have no better friend in all Cordova than the mistress of this house.”
As the last beggar hobbled from the court, a carriage drawn by a pair of
sleek mules drove out, with two ladies and a gentleman. Just then Don
Jaime came round the corner in search of us; he bowed to the ladies.
“Who are your friends?” Patsy demanded.
“The old it is Duquesa B. It is no longer young, but conserved very
good, eh? Her daughter it is appelled Rafaela. Was Queen of Beauty at
the _Yuego Florales_. To the elected poet she gave the prize, a natural
rose.”
“He means that they have a Contest of Poets every year here,” said
Patsy. “A theme is given out, a jury appointed, then the poems just
stream in from all over the province. From what the Don says, this old
dustheap of a Cordova wakes up a little at fair time. What luck that we
saw the Beauty!”
“Did you see who was sitting opposite her?” asked J. “It was O’Shea.”
“He’s easily consoled for Trinidad.” In spite of Patsy’s natural
jealousy, that meeting with O’Shea was a comfort to us all. It seemed to
bring us out of musty, dusty Cordova’s dead past, and link us with
dear, living Seville. In the cool of the afternoon, the streets woke up
a little; there were more carriages than one would have supposed
possible in the Paseo of El Gran Capitan.
That evening we went to the theatre. The performance began at half-past
eight. The price of box was five pesetas for each play. There were four
different pieces, each lasting about an hour. The advantage of the
system is, you can drop into a theatre early or late, and are not
obliged to pay for more of the performance than you see. The first play,
about a _contrabandista_ and his sweetheart, a _cigarrera_, was full of
gunshots and morality, and highly applauded, though the acting was
mediocre. Patsy, who discovered several pretty girls in the audience,
asked the Don if the women of Northern Spain were as charming as in the
South.
“Not all women in Andalusia is beautifool,” the Don admitted, “but _all_
is gracious; the young gels have a naturality. The Madrileñas, it is
affective their manniers for to speak, it is different from the
Andaluz!”
J. and I were satisfied with two plays. Patsy and Don Jaime stayed for
the last, an operetta.
“I like him better the music, it is the end representation,” said the
Don.
The next day Pasty had a great deal to tell us about Cordova. “There are
about twenty of the old aristocratic families who still live here,” he
said. “There is literally nothing for the young men to do but loaf about
the Club of Friendship, where, Don Jaime says, half the nobility of the
province have been ruined by gambling. Some people he knows have had to
sell their silver. They had a complete silver service, tureen, vegetable
dishes, plates, platters, all the rest of it, for every day. They only
used their English porcelain for best; now they have to use it every
day. The same people had solid silver basins and pitchers, and dozens of
those stunning old repoussé silver trays and platters they used to make
here. You see the Don knows Cordova well; he can tell you more about it
in an hour than you could get out of books in a year.”
The Don twirled his mustache and ran his fingers through his hair. “I
have a custom to come to Cordoba every winter,” he admitted. “At that
season all families is at their coontry place in the hills for the
shootings. In the _coto_ of my friend it is no luxury, all comfort. The
ladies go very simple, put a handkerchief over the head, or an old hat;
the children is dressed very plain, like the poor.”
“Is the sport good?” asked Patsy.
“In my youth it was more plenty the black beasts (wild boar). Now is
much deer, hares, rabbits, partridges.”
“Do you care about shooting?” I asked. The Don never walked a step, if
he could avoid it, and got up at two in the afternoon. I could not think
of him in the light of a sportsman.
“It is the preferred sport of all Spanishes men as of the English,” he
answered. “The ladies like the coontry very mooch; some of them kill the
game. We have large fires of great tree troonks, no small pieces of
woods like in the city. In the evening it is very sociable; we gather at
one house or another; there is singing and dancing. Ah, yes, the most
pleasant life is in the coontry. If the guests come far, they spend the
night. It is all so simply, no like England. One large room for all the
ladies; one for all the gentlemen.”
I asked the Don if they stayed in their country places in summer.
“No, in the spring they return to Cordoba. The hot is very strong; here
the houses is prepared for the hot. All people sit out in the court. In
soomer, they go to take another climate. The Sierra is not good for the
health, it is very humid.”
“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
[Illustration: THE MOSQUE, CORDOVA.]
[Illustration: 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, 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.