bottom of the Guadalquivir, looking for
Arab relics, and studying hydraulics.

Will that fellow never come? I cower
from the heat—blinding, dazzling, scorching,
screeching—under the Consul's portico, where
the stones are dry and cleaned by the all-purifying
heat; which, has been ever since daybreak,
in a broad waft of sunshine, stealing across
its white surface like the shadow that cancels
the hours over a dial-face. I look in, through
the flowering iron of the grating, at the quiet
court—with its glossy-leaved orange-trees,
their porous gold balls of bullion fruit
and their tight, highly finished rind, standing
so watchful and thoughtful, that I believe, if I
could find the right key and the old Moorish
talismanic word, they would speak. I observe
the fountain dimpling with the pettish
drops that fret the silver mirror of its surface,
and break up the pretty reflected picture
of the four trees and the corridors above,
the doorway of the sitting-room at the side,
and other garnishing, into broken and
discordant scraps and sketches of pictures. I
mark—for my eye will have it all to hand
over to blind Memory, who sits in the dark
rooms of the brain, shutters up, and depends
on her for out-door news—I mark the square,
cut down from the higher surface, just as in
the rooms in Pompeii. The Sevillians, indeed,
retain strictly the old Roman type, and a
more pleasurable semi-open-air life can scarcely
be conceived; but then you must group
children, and lovers, and old fathers round
the fountain. Long before I hear the servant's
tardy feet I have time to observe the
corridor balconied above, leading to the
bedrooms, looking so airy, tranquil, and cool,
that you would half-expect, on opening the
door, to find some of Zurburan's saints asleep
on the beds, or a Murillo's Saint Francis
struggling in rapturous devotion before an
ebony and ivory crucifix.

At last Pepe comes, smiling, and rubbing
his lips, still redolent of olla. Of course he is
gravely polite, and has a proverb—"No
summer like a late summer"'—to which I
condescend no reply: a fact that does not in
the least discomfort Pepe, who assures me that
that he and all that is in the house are at my
feet. His Excellency the Consul is not at
home; but must be in soon; for, at three,
his Reverency the Archbishop comes to dinner,
Do I not hear the hissing in the kitchen?
That is a snake that hisses, but does not bite.
I must pardon the kitchen proverb. Will I
walk in and take my siesta till his Excellency
the Señor returns? From the bottom of his
heart he regrets that he must, however, leave
me there alone, as he has some horses to look
after, and some herbs to get for the omelettes.
But shall he bring some Manzanilla and
a plate of biscuits?

I yield. I am shown into the Consul's
sunny twilight library; where the many
coloured bindings of the curious books for
which he is famous mottle the wall as with
precious tapestry. Where I sit, I can look
out into the great hall, and see the busts
from Italica that stare at me with sightless
eyes from behind their leafy ambuscades. I
am in the room of a highly civilised man, for
the walls are rich with choice pictures—
bouquets of very fleshy Rubens's, Rembrandt
midnights teeming with life, enamelled
miniatures by Gerald Dow. Scuds of
pistol-firing horsemen by Wouvermans.

I lay back luxuriously in a Turkish armchair,
and thought of the different siestas at
that moment taking place in Seville. Beggars
asleep smiling in doorways, their children
resting against their bandaged knees.
Duchesses in their rose-leaf coloured boudoirs,
their humming-bird fans, dropped from their
white wonders of hands—perhaps still warm
with lovers' kisses. For even duchesses have
lovers. Globular canons with mellow bald
heads asleep over Thomas Aquinas,
which is no wonder. Craftsmen dozing at
their looms; or beside their forges. Every
day at noon a Spanish city falls asleep, and
who knows when it wakens?

In this dim studious twilight, with a silence
only broken by fountain kisses, as of a perpetual
water nymph's honeymoon, and scented
with bridal orange blossoms, oriental, as fits
the city, I throw myself luxuriously into
a cushioned chair, and, propelling myself
lazily, like a paddler down a lotus river,
I drive slowly along the book-shelves, beating
them for game as an old pointer would the
yellow hair-brush stubbles. I have not well
passed over a yard or two of Lope de Vega's,
and nearly as much of Calderons and
Perreiras, when the word INQUISICION on the,
back of a little dried-up, colourless, cracked
duodecimo, with the date, sixteen hundred
and eighty, Amsterdam, on the title-page,
attracts my eye. I open it, and find it is a
collection of narratives of Inquisition
imprisonments in this very city, written by
one Serafin de Carcel, who escaped from
Cadiz to Holland, after having been condemned
to be burnt for heresy.

Now the Inquisition and its horrors were
always of special interest to me.

I had only yesterday padded all round by
the tobacco manufactory and the tall English
factory chimney rising from a convent
passing the arsenals (we got the word from
the Moors), the piles of salt codfish (how they
smell!), and the sellers of the fried fish
(called "soldiers of Pavia" from their yellow
uniforms). After many errrings and strayings,
I got to the Prado of Saint Sebastian, where
the foundations of a square platform still
mark the Quemadero or Burning Place. This
dusty horrid deserted square was the spot
where so many martyrs ascended in fiery
chariots to heaven.

So, while I had to wait, I took out my
notebook, and wrote down a few facts from this
rare and curious book; from which, by the
aid of memory, I have since put together