It Was In A State To Be Come And
Lived In At Any Moment, Though I Believe It Was Occupied Only In The
Late Spring And The Early Autumn; In Winter The Noble Family Went To
Madrid, And In Summer To Some Northern Watering-Place.
It was rather
small, and expressed a life of the minor hospitalities when the family
was in residence.
It was no place for house-parties, and scarcely for
week-end visits, or even for neighborhood dinners. Perhaps on that
terrace there was afternoon ice-cream or chocolate for friends who rode
or drove over or out; it seemed so possible that we had to check in
ourselves the cozy impulse to pull up our shell-covered cement chairs to
some central table of like composition.
Within, the villa was of a spick-and-spanness which I feel that I have
not adequately suggested; and may I say that the spray of a garden-hose
seemed all that would be needed to put the place in readiness for
occupation? Not that even this was needed for that interior of tile and
marble, so absolutely apt for the climate and the use the place would be
put to. In vain we conjectured, and I hope not impertinently, the
characters and tastes of the absentees; the sole clue that offered
itself was a bookshelf of some Spanish versions from authors scientific
and metaphysical to the verge of agnosticism. I would not swear to
Huxley and Herbert Spencer among the English writers, but they were such
as these, not in their entire bulk, but in extracts and special essays.
I recall the slightly tilted row of the neat paper copies; and I wish I
knew who it was liked to read them. The Spanish have a fondness for such
dangerous ground; from some of their novels it appears they feel it
rather chic to venture on it.
IX
We came away from Cordova with a pretty good conscience as to its
sights. Upon the whole we were glad they were so few, when once we had
made up our minds about the mosque. But now I have found too late that
we ought to have visited the general market in the old square where the
tournaments used to take place; we ought to have seen also the Chapel of
the Hospital del Cardenal, because it was part of the mosque of
Al-Manssour; we ought to have verified the remains of two baths out of
the nine hundred once existing in the Calle del Bagno Alta; and we ought
finally to have visited the remnant of a Moorish house in the Plazuela
de San Nicolas, with its gallery of jasper columns, now unhappily
whitewashed. The Campo Santo has an unsatisfied claim upon my interest
because it was the place where the perfervid Christian zealots used to
find the martyrdom they sought at the hands of the unwilling Arabs; and
where, far earlier, Julius Caesar planted a plane tree after his victory
over the forces of Pompeii at Munda.
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