If religious sway over temporal things has declined, Toledo still impresses one as little more than a big church founded on the rock, with room made for the money-changers' benches, and an unimaginable jumble of palaces once thronged with powerful courtiers and abundant in wealth, but at this day chiefly inhabited by persons of humble quality. Nightly there glows in the second story of a building on the Zocodover, where autos-da-fé used to be held, a large arched shrine of the Virgin hung with mellow lamps, so that not even with departing daylight shall religious duty be put aside by the commonplace crowd shuffling through the plaza beneath. Everywhere in angles and turnings and archways one comes upon images and pictures fixed to the wall under a pointed roof made with two short boards, to draw a passing genuflection or incidental ave from any one who may be going by on an errand of business or—as more often occurs—laziness. Feast-days, too, are still ardently observed. With all this, somehow, the fact connects itself that the populace are instinctive, free-born, insatiable beggars. The magnificently chased door-ways of the cathedral festered with revolting specimens of human disease and degeneration, appealing for alms. Other more prosperous mendicants were regularly on hand for business every day at the "old stand" in some particular thoroughfare. I remember one, especially, whose whole capital was invested in a superior article of nervous complaint, which enabled him to balance himself between the wall and a crutch, and there oscillate spasmodically by the hour. In this he was entirely beyond competition, and cast into the shade those merely routine professionals who took the common line of bad eyes or uninterestingly motionless deformities. It used to depress them when he came on to the ground. Bright little children, even, in perfect health, would desist from their amusements and assail us, struck with the happy thought that they might possibly wheedle the "strangers" into some untimely generosity. There was one pretty girl of about ten years, who laughed outright at the thought of her own impudence, but stopped none the less for half an hour on her way to market (carrying a basket on her arm) in order to pester poor Velveteen while he was sketching, and begged him for money, first to get bread, and then shoes, and then anything she could think of.
A hand opened to receive money would be a highly suitable device for the municipal coat of arms.
My friend's irrepressible pencil, by-the-way, made him the centre of a crowd wherever he went. Grave business men came out of their shops to see what he was drawing; loungers made long and ingenious detours in order to obtain a good view of his labors; ragamuffins elbowed him, undismayed by energetic remarks in several languages, until finally he was moved to get up and display the contents of his pockets, inviting them even to read some letters he had with him. To this gentle satire they would sometimes yield. We fell a prey, however, to one silent youth of whom we once unguardedly asked a question. After that he considered himself permanently engaged to pilot us about. He would linger for hours near the fonda dinnerless, and, what was even more terrible, sleepless, so that he might fasten upon us the moment we should emerge. If he discovered our destination, he would stride off mutely in advance, to impress on us the fact that we were under obligation to him; and when we found the place we wanted, he waited patiently until we had rewarded him with a half-cent. If we gratified him by asking him the way, he responded by silently stretching forth his arm and one long forefinger with a lordly gesture, still striding on; and he had a very superior Castilian sneering smile, which he put on when he looked around to see if we were following. He gradually became for us a sort of symbolic shadow of the town's vanished greatness; and from his mysterious way of coming into sight, and haunting us in the most unexpected places, we gave him the name of "Ghost." Nevertheless, we baffled him at last. In the Street of the Christ of Light there is a small but exceedingly curious mosque, now converted into a church, so ancient in origin that some of the capitals in it are thought to show Visigothic work, so that it must have been a Christian church even before the Moorish invasion. Close by this we chanced upon a charming old patio, or court-yard, entered through a wooden gate, and by dexterously gliding in here and shutting the gate we exorcised "Ghost" for some time.
The broad red tiles of this patio contrasted well with its white-washed arcade pillars, on which were embossed the royal arms of Castile; and the jutting roof of the house was supported on elaborate beams of old Spanish cedar cracked with age. It was sadly neglected. Flowers bloomed in the centre, but a pile of lumber littered one side; and the house was occupied by an old woman who was washing in the arcade, her tub being the half of a big terra-cotta jar laid on its side. She spread her linen out on the hot pavement to dry; and a sprightly neighbor coming in with a basket of clothes and a "Health to thee!" was invited to dry her wash on a low tile roof adjoining.
"Solitude" served at once as her name and to describe her surroundings. We made friends with her, the more easily because she was much interested in the sketch momently growing under my companion's touch.
"And you don't draw?" she inquired of me.