“Don Cipriano calls her Una, because she can tame wild beasts,” said he.
Dick's face became almost too expressive. If he did not want Pilar's eyes to read his every emotion, I thought he would be wiser to put on his motor-mask.
XXV
What Cordoba Lacked
Through a flowery field of cloth-of-gold we came, while the afternoon was young, into Cordoba—“Kartuba the Important,” lying like a grave entombing its dead glory, prone at the foot of tombstone mountains.
After the dazzle of wild-flowers shining in the sun, and the ozone of country breezes, a sudden entrance into the network of narrow streets was like being thrown, without a clue, into the Minotaur's dark labyrinth.
I had thought that no town could have narrower streets than Toledo; but the streets of Cordoba were mere slits between house-walls. As we scraped through on the car, Dick likened the town to a huge white cake divided into slices by a sharp knife, but left in shape with only one or two pieces pulled out to loosen the mass.
Still, the stone-paved slits contrived to make pictures; with here and there a pair of splendid Moorish doors, a row of ancient eastern-patterned windows, or a fairy glimpse of a sunlit patio beyond a tunnel of shadow; a fountain spraying jewels, a waving of palms and glow of hanging roses.