the top," said I, bethinking myself of the task that was before me.
And indeed my heart was hardly at ease within me, for that which I
had to say would require all the spirit of which I was master.

The ascent to the Giralda is very long and very fatiguing; and we had
to pause on the various landings and in the singular belfry in order
that Miss Daguilar might recruit her strength and breath. As we
rested on one of these occasions, in a gallery which runs round the
tower below the belfry, we heard a great noise of shouting, and a
clattering of sticks among the bells. "It is the party of your
countrymen who went up before us," said she. "What a pity that
Englishmen should always make so much noise!" And then she spoke in
Spanish to the custodian of the bells, who is usually to be found in
a little cabin up there within the tower. "He says that they went up
shouting like demons," continued Maria; and it seemed to me that she
looked as though I ought to be ashamed of the name of an Englishman.
"They may not be so solemn in their demeanour as Spaniards," I
answered; "but, for all that, there may be quite as much in them."

We then again began to mount, and before we had ascended much farther
we passed my three countrymen. They were young men, with gray coats
and gray trousers, with slouched hats, and without gloves. They had
fair faces and fair hair, and swung big sticks in their hands, with
crooked handles. They laughed and talked loud, and, when we met
them, seemed to be racing with each other; but nevertheless they were
gentlemen. No one who knows by sight what an English gentleman is,
could have doubted that; but I did acknowledge to myself that they
should have remembered that the edifice they were treading was a
church, and that the silence they were invading was the cherished
property of a courteous people.