A Million And A Half For The
Safeguarding Prisoners And Wounded.
"One million for Masses of Thanksgiving; 700,494 ducats for secret
service, etc.
"And one hundred millions for the patience with which I have listened to
the king, who demands an account from the man who has presented him with
a Kingdom."
It seems that Gonsalvo was one of the greatest humorists, as well as
captains of his age, and the king may very well have liked his fun no
better than his fame. Now that he has been dead nearly four hundred
years, Ferdinand would, if he were living, no doubt join Cordova in
honoring Gonzalo Hernandez de Aguila y de Cordova. After all he was not
born in Cordova (as I had supposed till an hour ago), but in the little
city of Montilla, five stations away on the railroad to the Malaga, and
now more noted for its surpassing sherry than for the greatest soldier
of his time. To have given its name to Amontillado is glory enough for
Montilla, and it must be owned that Gonzalo Hernandez de Aguila y de
Montilla would not sound so well as the title we know the hero by, when
we know him at all. There may be some who will say that Cordova merits
remembrance less because of him than because of Columbus, who first came
to the Catholic kings there to offer them not a mere kingdom, but a
whole hemisphere. Cordova was then the Spanish headquarters for the
operations against Granada, and one reads of the fact with a luminous
sense which one cannot have till one has seen Cordova.
VIII
After our visits to the mosque and the bridge and the museum there
remained nothing of our forenoon, and we gave the whole of the earlier
afternoon to an excursion which strangers are expected to make into the
first climb of hills to the eastward of the city. The road which reaches
the Huerto de los Arcos is rather smoother for driving than the streets
of Cordova, but the rain had made it heavy, and we were glad of our good
horses and their owner's mercy to them. He stopped so often to breathe
them when the ascent began that we had abundant time to note the
features of the wayside; the many villas, piously named for saints, set
on the incline, and orcharded about with orange trees, in the beginning
of that measureless forest of olives which has no limit but the horizon.
From the gate to the villa which we had come to see it was a stiff
ascent by terraced beds of roses, zinneas, and purple salvia beside
walls heavy with jasmine and trumpet creepers, in full bloom, and orange
trees, fruiting and flowering in their desultory way. Before the villa
we were to see a fountain much favored by our guide who had a passion
for the jets that played ball with themselves as long as the gardener
let him turn the water on, and watched with joy to see how high the
balls would go before slipping back.
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