Men Leaned Against The
Door-Posts And Stared Motionless, And Hags, Lean And Fat, Sat On The
Thresholds And Wished To Tell Our Fortunes; Younger Women Ranged The
Sidewalks And Offered To Dance.
They all had flowers in their hair, and
some were of a horrible beauty, especially one in a green waist, with
both white and red flowers in her dusky locks.
Down the middle of the
road a troop of children, some blond, but mostly black, tormented a
hapless ass colt; and we hurried away as fast as our guide could
persuade our cabman to drive. But the gipsy quarter had another street
in reserve which made us sorry to have left the first. It paralleled the
river, and into the center of it every manner of offal had been cast
from the beginning of time to reek and fester and juicily ripen and rot
in unspeakable corruption. It was such a thoroughfare as Dante might
have imagined in his Hell, if people in his time had minded such
horrors; but as it was we could only realize that it was worse than
infernal, it was medieval, and that we were driving in such putrid
foulness as the gilded carriages of kings and queens and the prancing
steeds and palfreys of knights and ladies found their way through
whenever they went abroad in the picturesque and romantic Middle Ages. I
scarcely remember now how we got away and down to the decent waterside,
and then by the helpful bridge to the other shore of the Guadalquivir,
painted red with the reflections of those consoling tramp steamers.
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