It Is Said That The Streets Were The First To Be Paved In
Europe, And They Have Apparently Not Been Repaved Since 850.
This indeed
will not Hold quite true of that thoroughfare, twenty feet wide at
least, which led from our hotel to the Paseo del Gran Capitan.
In this
were divers shops of the genteeler sort, and some large cafes, standing
full of men of leisure, who crowded to their doors and windows, with
their hats on and their hands in their pockets, as at a club, and let no
fact of the passing world escape their hungry eyes. Their behavior
expressed a famine of incident in Cordova which was pathetic.
VII
The people did not look very healthy as to build or color, and there was
a sound of coughing everywhere. To be sure, it was now the season of the
first colds, which would no doubt wear off with the coming of next
spring; and there was at any rate not nearly so much begging as at
Toledo, because there could not be anywhere. I am sorry I can contribute
no statistics as to the moral or intellectual condition of Cordova;
perhaps they will not be expected or desired of me; I can only say that
the general intelligence is such that no one will own he does not know
anything you ask him even when he does not; but this is a national
rather than a local trait, which causes the stranger to go in many wrong
directions all over the peninsula.
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