Roman, And Carthaginian Occupations To
The Inarticulate Iberian Past We Should Come, I Suppose, From Far And
Near To Visit It.
Now, however, after gasping at its outlook, we left it
hopelessly, and lost ourselves, except for our kindly guide, in the
crooked little stony lanes, with the sun hot on our backs and the shade
cool in our faces.
There were Moorish bits and suggestions in the white
walls and the low flat roofs of the houses, but these were not so
jealous of their privacy as such houses were once meant to be. Through
the gate of one we were led into a garden of simple flowers belted with
a world-old parapet, over which we could look at a stretch of the Gothic
wall of King Wamba's time, before the miserable Roderick won and lost
his kingdom. A pomegranate tree, red with fruit, overhung us, and from
the borders of marigolds and zinnias and German clover the gray
garden-wife gathered a nosegay for us. She said she was three _duros_
and a half old, as who should say three dollars and a half, and she had
a grim amusement in so translating her seventy years.
V
It was hard by her cottage that we saw our first mosque, which had begun
by being a Gothic church, but had lost itself in paynim hands for
centuries, in spite of the lamp always kept burning in it. Then one day
the Cid came riding by, and his horse, at sight of a white stone in the
street pavement, knelt down and would not budge till men came and dug
through the wall of the mosque and disclosed this indefatigable lamp in
the church.
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