A Painted Window Above The Door
Cast A Glare Of Fresh Red And Blue Over The Interior, And Over The
Comfortably matted floor; and there was a quite freshly carved and
gilded chapel which the pleasant youth supplementing our policeman
For
the time said was done by artists still living in Tarifa. The edifice
was of a very flamboyant Gothic, with clusters of slender columns and a
vault brilliantly swirled over with decorations of the effect of peacock
feathers. But above all there was on a small side altar a figure of the
Child Jesus dressed in the corduroy suit and felt hat of a Spanish
shepherd, with a silver crook in one hand and leading a toy lamb by a
string in the other. Our young guide took the image down for us to look
at, and showed its shepherd's dress with peculiar satisfaction; and then
he left it on the ground while he went to show us something else. When
we came back we found two small boys playing with the Child, putting its
hat off and on, and feeling of its clothes. Our guide took it from them,
not unkindly, and put it back on the altar; and whether the reader will
agree with me or not, I must own that I did not find the incident
irreverent or without a certain touchingness, as if those children and
He were all of one family and they were at home with Him there.
Rather suddenly, after we left the church, by way of one of those
unexpectedly expanding lanes, we found ourselves on the shore of the
purple sea where the Moors first triumphed over the Goths twelve hundred
years before, and five centuries later the Spaniards heat them back from
their attempt to reconquer the city.
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