see it for me. I myself do not expect to return to Cordova.




IX

FIRST DAYS IN SEVILLE


Cordova seemed to cheer up as much as we at our going. We had
undoubtedly had the better night's sleep; as often as we woke we found
Cordova awake, walking and talking, and coughing more than the night
before, probably from fresh colds taken in the rain. From time to time
there were church-bells, variously like tin pans and iron pots in tone,
without sonorousness in their noise, or such wild clangor as some
Italian church-bells have. But Cordova had lived through it, and at the
station was lively with the arriving and departing trains. The morning
was not only bright; it was hot, and the place babbled with many voices.
We thought one voice crying "Agua, agua!" was a parrot's and then we
thought it was a girl's, but really it was a boy with water for sale in
a stone bottle. He had not a rose, white or red, in his hair, but if he
had been a girl, old or young, he would have had one, white or red. Some
of the elder women wore mantillas, but these wore flowers too, and were
less pleasing than pathetic for it; one very massive matron was less
pleasing and more pathetic than the rest. Peasant women carried bunches
of chickens by the legs, and one had a turkey in a rush bag with a
narrow neck to put its head out of for its greater convenience in
gobbling. At the door of the station a donkey tried to bite a fly on its
back; but even a Spanish donkey cannot do everything. There was no