search of the house where Murillo, the last
great religious painter of Europe, was born.
My bed, in that corner, is a dry, bouncing
sort of bed, built on a frugal and ascetic
principle suited for hot climates, where a
feather-bed would be a mild term for asphyxia,
and is stuffed, I suspect, by the mouldy
smell, with maize straw. The green mosquito-
curtains I have rolled up round the
iron frame of the top of the bed, because I
usually get helplessly entangled in them, and
resemble a mariner in a mermaid's tangle of
sea-weed. I lift my red, damp cheek from
the pillow, which bounces up after me in an
obdurate and unfeeling way, being by nature
singularly unreceptive and incapable of soft
impressions. I look round at the wall, for
fear of scorpions, and with a dreamy sense of
that pleasant serenade from a distant guitar
that lulled me to sleep last night.

A bell rings. It is the dinner-tocsin. "La
comida e parada; dinner is ready, gentlemens,"
says Rose, the waiter and guide, in a
double-barrelled proclamation, he being one of
those split-tongued sons of Gibraltar who act
as guides and waiters all over Spain.

I shuffle off my yellow slippers, that I
bought of Yoosoof Yacoob, the Moorish Jew,
in the Street of Oranges, hurry on my boots,
brush my beard, twiddle my moustachios
into dagger-points, and hurry down.

Always the same company: the Gibraltar
Colonel Martinet, and his pretty, satirical-
looking wife. They are too proud to speak,
though they are dying to know how to get
on to-night to Cordova; so he chews his
moustachio, and tries to joke at the Spaniards
with his wife, in a playful and superior
way. Then there is a priestly-looking man,
of a rich Murillo red brown, with shaved
blue head, who is soaking golden slices of
apricot in his wine; a far-German baron, all
spectacles and beard, who wears an immense
gold ring on his dirty thumb; a young olive-
coloured Don Juan, who I suspect is a
billiard-marker; several Englishmen, who
are cursing the mosquitoes and the heat;
and a fat Canon, who has just tucked up his
gown, ready for action, and has hung his
black shovel-hat, which is at least a yard
long, on the wall behind him. Rosy apples
bedded in orange-flowers are on the table,
and half the company are soaking their
Muscatel grapes in water, ready for dessert.
The dishes come in in that peculiar succession
common to Spain. Soup, all alive with
twining threads of white vermicelli; then
some mysterious little sweetbreads, fried, the
exact colour of a new-laid gravel walk; then
delicate red mullet; then slices of savoury veal,
smothered in orange-coloured tomato-sauce;
then a small repast of endive-salad alone,
much to the insolent amusement of the English
bagmen, who laugh till their great teeth
show like so many sharks' mouths rising at
a bait; then quails and partridges, carefully
dismembered; and, lastly, giant slices of a
huge Valencia melon, that melts to nectar
and sugar in the mouth, green figs, citronised
by the sun, musk-grapes, ratafias, more wine,
and a light sifting in of sweetmeats to fill up
the chinks.

No wonder the Canon crosses his hands
on his butt or stomach, and turns his eyes
heavenward, I trust in thankfulness. No
wonder Don Juan leans forward to the
central stand and selects the longest tooth-
pick, that he may display a glittering paste
ring on his lean, sinful little finger. No
wonder the conversation so lulls that the
chatter of the white-jacketed waiters in
the hall, where the fountain dribbled and
trickled, grows more and more audible.
There is a dreadful noise of nothing, as
Horace said of the country. I bow to the
company, thrust back my chair, and stroll
into the hall, where the landlord, cigar in
mouth, is entering the visitors' names in
the police inspection-book. The doors of the
bath-rooms are open, gaping for air; the great
apocryphal maps of London and Paris, on the
walls, have no air to fan them up and down;
the huge banana-tree, with the broad, split
lined leaves, here and there spotted with
whitewash, is silent, and shakes not with any
fear. Drip, drip, drip, goes the fountain. I look
at the notices on the walls. Great bull-fight
at Cordova; a chocolate bull, leaping at a
man mounted on a black Leviathan.

That won't do. Steamer to Cadiz, Miercoles-
Domingo? That won't do. Ball to be
given to-night by the celebrated dancing
master, Pepe Blanco, Street of the Mulattos,
near the house of Pilate. Opens at nine
o'clock. That will do. Rose (my guide), we
will go.

"Very well, gentlemens."

"Will there be any gipsy dancers at
Pepe's?"

"Yes, my gentlemens."

"Fandango?"

"Yes."

"Bolero?"

"Yes. Yeas, Signor, Cachuca; everytings,
my gentlemens. Pepe is first dancing-master
in Seville. Perea Nina came through his
school; he prepared the muchachas for the
opera; he is good dancing-mans, my gentlemens."

It is nine, and we are on our way, by
starlight, to the Street of the Mulattos and
the dancing school of the filles d'opéra. As
we go along the narrow, paved street, we
are delighted with the beautiful interiors
that we see through the painted iron-work
of the hall-gates. The dark, unglazed grated
windows, with the rolls of red matting hung
over them; the flat roofs and watch-towers
are strange and Moorish enough; but they
have no charm, in comparison, with these
family pictures,—so beautifully framed, and
so carefully guarded within their chapel-like
screens of iron (like so many twining flower-
stalks turned to metal) that seem sometimes