Peter the Cruel's to have denied him, and he planted us at the most
favorable point for the function in the High Chapel, with instructions
which portal to hurry to when the movement began, and took his peseta
and went his way. Then, while we confidingly waited, he came rushing
back and with a great sweep of his hat wafted us to the door which he
had said the procession would go out by, but which he seemed to have
learned it would come in by, and we were saved from what had almost been
his fatal error. I forgave him the more gladly because I could rejoice
in his returning to repair his error, although he had collected his
money; and with a heart full of pride in his verification of my theory
of the faithful Spanish nature, I gave myself to the shining
gorgeousness of the procession that advanced chanting in the blaze of
the Sevillian sun. There was every rank of clergy, from the archbishop
down, in robes of ceremonial, but I am unable honestly to declare the
admiration for their splendor which I would have willingly felt. The
ages of faith in which those vestments were designed were apparently not
the ages of taste; yet it was the shape of the vestments and not the
color which troubled the eye of unfaith, if not of taste. The
archbishop in crimson silk, with his train borne by two acolytes, the
canons in their purple, the dean in his gold-embroidered robes, and the
priests and choristers in their black robes and white surplices richly
satisfied it; and if some of the clerics were a little frayed and some
of the acolytes were spotted with the droppings of the candles, these
were details which one remembered afterward and that did not matter at
the time.

When the procession was housed again, we went off and forgot it in the
gardens of the Alcazar. But I must not begin yet on the gardens of the
Alcazar. We went to them every day, as we did to the cathedral, but we
did not see them until our second morning in Seville. We gave what was