formulæ. Wavering and narrow and sombre, it stretches upward on a
gradual incline until it meets the cathedral stepping out from the line
of the old houses and closing the vista. Even in the short perspective,
the huge, blackened eaves of the opposite roofs seem almost to meet.
Balconies, associated with moonlight and mandolins, serenades and
señoritas, jut out from every window; dark bosses of escutcheons mark
the fronts; and below, along the edging of sidewalk, are the dim little
shops, curtained by yellow canvas, intensely and delightfully local, and
wholly unknowing of outside demand or competition. One of these places
does indeed cater to visitors with a humble supply of photographs and of
clicking sets of varnished wooden castanets paired by colored worsteds;
but the others of the store-keepers and the inhabitants in the streets
are clearly unhardened to foreigners, and regard us solely with a deep
and artless curiosity,--tempered, I hope, by admiration. As the town has
been, so it is. It is an epitome of Spain and her past.


IV.

At the head of the street we enter the cool cathedral, and find, as
always, wealth created by poverty. In places such as these one realizes
the hold of the Romish system on mediæval Europe. One realizes its power
also. No matter what the size of a town, it boasts its costly church;
oftener, as here, its cathedral. Villages, houses, people, may be poor,
their church stands rich; they may be unlearned in art and in culture,
their church stands a model of both. There was their shrine, their
finality,--in religion not merely, but in art and wisdom and authority.


At least, the Catholic system held its followers firmly in leash.