Christian and rests under the special protection of the Archangel
Raphael." It is all rather contradictory; but Gautier owns that the
great mosque is a "monument unique in the world, and novel even for
travelers who have had the fortune to admire the wonders of Moorish
architecture at Granada or Seville."

De Amicis, who visited Cordova nearly forty-five years later, and in the
heart of spring, brought letters which opened something of the intimate
life of that apparently blanched and calcined skeleton. He meets young
men and matches Italian verses with their Spanish; spends whole nights
sitting in their cafes or walking their plazas, and comes away with his
mouth full of the rapturous verses of an Arab poet: "Adieu, Cordova!
Would that my life were as long as Noah's, that I might live forever
within thy walls! Would that I had the treasures of Pharaoh, to spend
them upon wine and the beautiful women of Cordova, with tho gentle eyes
that invite kisses!" He allows that the lines may be "a little too
tropical for the taste of a European," and it seems to me that there may
be a golden mean between scolding and flattering which would give the
truth about Cordova. I do not promise to strike it; our hotel still
rankles in my heart; but I promise to try for it, though I have to say
that the very moment we started for the famous mosque it began to rain,
and rained throughout the forenoon, while we weltered from wonder to
wonder through the town. We were indeed weltering in a closed carriage,
which found its way not so badly through the alleys where two mules
could not pass abreast. The lime-wash of the walls did not emit the
white heat in which tho other tourists have basked or baked; the houses
looked wet and chill, and if they had those flowered and fountained
_patios_ which people talk of they had taken them in out of the rain.