VII


The people did not look very healthy as to build or color, and there was
a sound of coughing everywhere. To be sure, it was now the season of the
first colds, which would no doubt wear off with the coming of next
spring; and there was at any rate not nearly so much begging as at
Toledo, because there could not be anywhere. I am sorry I can contribute
no statistics as to the moral or intellectual condition of Cordova;
perhaps they will not be expected or desired of me; I can only say that
the general intelligence is such that no one will own he does not know
anything you ask him even when he does not; but this is a national
rather than a local trait, which causes the stranger to go in many wrong
directions all over the peninsula. I should not say that there was any
noticeable decay of character from the north to the south such as the
attributive pride of the old Castilian in the Sheridan Knowlesian drama
would teach; the Cordovese looked no more shiftless than the haughtiest
citizens of Burgos.

They had decidedly prettier _patios_ and more of them, and they had many
public carriages against none whatever in that ancient capital. Rubber
tires I did not expect in Cordova and certainly did not get in a city
where a single course over the pavements of 850 would have worn them to
tatters: but there seems a good deal of public spirit if one may judge
from the fact that it is the municipality which keeps Abderrahman's
mosque in repair. There are public gardens, far pleasanter than those of