If There Are Any Doubters, Let Them Go And See
The Chapel, As I Did.
When the allied armies of the Christian kings of
Spain were seeking for a passage through the hills to the Plains of
Tolosa, a shepherd appeared and led them straight to victory and endless
fame.
After the battle, which broke the Moorish power forever in Central
Spain, instead of looking for the shepherd and paying him handsomely for
his timely scout-service, they found it more pious and economical to say
it was San Isidro in person who had kindly made himself flesh for this
occasion. By the great altar in the Cathedral of Toledo stand side by
side the statues of Alonso VIIL, the Christian commander, and San Isidro
brazenly swelling in the shepherd garb of that unknown guide who led
Alonso and his chivalry through the tangled defiles of the Sierra
Morena.
His fete is the Derby Day of Madrid. The whole town goes out to his
Hermitage on the further banks of the Manzanares, and spends a day or
two of the soft spring weather in noisy frolic. The little church stands
on a bare brown hill, and all about it is an improvised village
consisting half of restaurants and the other half of toyshops. The
principal traffic is in a pretty sort of glass whistle which forms the
stem of an artificial rose, worn in the button-hole in the intervals of
tooting, and little earthen pig-bells, whose ringing scares away the
lightning.
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