sacristy-room in the Archbishop's palace at
Seville, and who is writing a folio on
Murillo's Concepcion Inmaculada, with a
slight glance at the history of art from the
time of Daedalus.  Perhaps I shall see his
old eye firing up at a bull-fight, or meet
him at the corner of a moonlit street at
Granada; his cloak wrapped round his left
arm, defending himself with a guitar only
from the swords of ten bravos, two of
whom he will brain with that frail weapon.
Shall I find him looking at that horrid rascal
Gines de Pasemonte, being garotted at
Algeçiras; or, will he be clothed in brown,
the pompous governor of some wasp-nest
of a place on the green coast of Morocco,
where leather is daily made, and Spaniards
are daily tanned?  I shall find him cheapening
the jaquete—those little whitebait fish
in the creels of the Malaga Masaniellos,
that shine so like new-cast type.  I shall
meet him talking politics with the alguacil
at the little marble tables of the demure
Spanish café.  I shall know him beside the
green field of a billiard table, or listening to
the evening band in the new Plaza.  I shall
have much difficulty, but find him I know
and feel I shall.

I will not deny I occasionally forgot the
object of my search.  Once when I watched
the dusty-footed perspiring negroes, trampling
down the Malaga raisins surrounded by crowds
of dismounted muleteers in chestnut-coloured
leather breeches, tight as the skin, and
ornamented with rows of silvery buttons down
the side.  Also, when on a drizzling foggy
morning, I turned my back on pleasant Seville,
and steamed up that dismal Lethe stream, the
Guadalquivir, on whose low, earthy banks,
broad and flat as deserts, scampering herds
of half wild oxen tossed and charged through
clouds of dust-smoke, blown up angrily as by
some simoom the Arabs had left behind,
in the hurry of their packing, and pursued
by mounted herdsmen, shouting hoarsely
and brandishing their long spears like
so many Bedouins.  I forgot thee again,
O Don of the wavy moustachio and crow's-
foot eye, as in the coloured darkness of that
dim cathedral in Adrian's birthplace, I groped
into cedar-scented sacristies—holy chapels
where the candles shone like yellow stars,
and silver bells tinkled solemn warnings to
the kneeling women with drooped fans and
veiled mantillas.  I forgot thee, O exquisite
Don, too, for a moment, when I was riding
through the raisin country; when I slept in
the Alhambra garden; when I plodded up
the ramps of the Giralda.

But let me return to where I remembered
thee, and sought thee with all the zeal of
those childish days when I first read thee
through Smollet, and alternately laughed
and cried at thy generous thunders and most
wise follies, thou proprietor of the craziest
head and noblest heart!  thou paladin of a
scoffing and unbelieving age!

First, in the church.  It was a September
morning; the sky already at nine o'clock
bright, clear, and hot as so much fire-water
one hundred degrees above proof.  I strolled
into the market-place of Granada to wile
away the half hour which the angel whose
breathing we hear in every clock-case was
slowly doling out.  I determined to try if I
could not ferret out among the chattering
crowd that Don who played at hide and seek
with me.  I might find him watching with
lean, hungry eye, while he shaped his rusty
moustachio, the shining half pound of tough
beef that would go to form the small olla which
would be his scanty dinner at twelve o'clock.
I take mental notes of the water-sellers, with
their trays of pence, and of the itinerant bakers
with rings of bread upon long kabob-skewers,
just such as Fadladeen might have carried in
that gorgeous city where the celebrated
unlucky cream-tarts were made.  I then patrol
cautiously round the wandering potter, who
sits sullenly, surrounded by his green-glazed
pipkins and cream-coloured pans, like an
Israelite praying amid the brick-kilns of
Pharaoh.  I shun the one-eyed beggar with
the guitar, and the dirty gipsy-chief with
Indian blanket and gold ear-rings, though he
does govern a thievish tribe in the hill-caves
round the Alhambra towers.  For some say,
though now a blacksmith, he was once a
leading murderer in José-Maria's notorious
gang, and he is not quite a man to rub
elbows with, if you carry a purse or valuables.
But I follow a breath of incense, which
draws me with gentle violence, as good
influences draw us, to the wide door of
the cathedral, thrown open for early mass.
That perfumed breath winds through the
rugged, garlicky, jostling, ignoble crowd,
and picks me out—me, the meanest in Israel.
I follow it as the old chivalric seekers for
the mystery of the sacred chalice (the
Sainte Graal), followed all miraculous calls,
whether of singing bird, or vocal flower, or
current air, or calling water.  I here may
find the Don; his old horny knees bent
before some painted waxwork Saint Iago, or
some daub of Saint James smiting the
Saracen; his fevered eyes turned absently
towards the priest in white and gold, and the
kneeling acolyte with the giant psalter, all
a-shine with unfading colour.

Persistently bowing my head under the
great Chirurgueresque portal, I was washed
in by a spring flood of impatient worshippers.
What a sight it was to see littered over the
broad-chequered floor, flocks of prostrate
ladies, their black fans working like undertakers'
plumes on a clearing-up day after a
great, good, rich man's funeral; strewn about
in groups before the mouths of the side-
chapels, where cross lights shone and glowed,
or kneeling in agonies of downcast sorrow at
the silver railing that warded in the high
altar, where Madame Tussaud seemed to
have been especially busy; though her work