'Une bonne intention est une echelle trop courte.'

Conyngham made his way without difficulty or incident from Xeres to
Cordova, riding for the most part in front of the clumsy diligencia
wherein he had bestowed his luggage. The road was wearisome enough,
and the last stages, through the fertile plains bordering the
Guadalquivir, dusty and monotonous.

At Cordova the traveller found comfortable quarters in an old inn
overlooking the river. The ancient city was then, as it is now, a
great military centre, and the headquarters of the picturesque corps
of horse-tamers, the 'Remonta,' who are responsible for the mounting
of the cavalry and the artillery of Spain. Conyngham had, at the
suggestion of General Vincente, made such small changes in his
costume as would serve to allay curiosity and prevent that gossip of
the stable and kitchen which may follow a traveller to his hurt from
one side of a continent to the other.

'Wherever you may go learn your way in and out of every town, and
you will thus store up knowledge most useful to a soldier,' the
General had said in his easy way.

'See you,' Concepcion had observed, wagging his head over a
cigarette; 'to go about the world with the eyes open is to conquer
the world.'

From his guide, moreover, whose methods were those that Nature
teaches to men who live their daily lives in her company, Conyngham
learnt much of that road craft which had raised Concepcion Vara to
such a proud eminence among the rascals of Andalusia. Cordova was a