Twenty bells on swinging beams, that throw the echoing mouths outward through the openings, and two fixed in place within, of which Santa Maria—profanely called The Fat One—is the largest: such is the battery at command. They are not all used at once, however, for the Angelus. The ringer and his two sons were satisfied with touching up Santa Catalina (of a tone peculiarly deep and acceptable), St. John the Baptist, San José, and one or two others. The whole brazen family have been duly baptized, among them being San Laureano and San Isidoro, named after the special patrons of Sevilla. One after another their tongues rolled forth a deafening roar, in a systematic disorder of thunderous tones, while the chief ringer went about unconcernedly with a smouldering cigarette in his lips. One of his sons, after uncoiling the twisted rope around the beam of San Laureano, thus getting it into violent motion, watched his chance, sprung on to the beam, agile as a cat, and stood there while it rocked, the bell under him swinging out at each turn, over the open square below. It was three hundred feet, down to the pavement, and the least slip would have sent him down to it like a handful of dirt. His conception of what would please us, nevertheless, led him thoroughly to unnerve us by repeating the performance several times.
"Why don't the high-priest, or whatever he is, go on and finish up this church?" asked Whetstone of the guide. "Seems to me it's about time."
"The priest? He don't want to," was Vincent's answer, given with a movement of the fingers meant to imply the receiving of money. "It make too good excuse."
Our conductor, who I am sure was a sceptic, went on to declare that within the last ten years ninety thousand dollars had been left by will for carrying on the unfinished portion of the cathedral, but as yet no movement to begin the work had been made. "Where all that money go?" he asked, innocent curiosity overspreading his features, while his eye gleamed with hidden intelligence.
"What do the people think of the priests?" one of us asked.
"The chimneys[7] will find out some time," he replied; adding, in the proverbial strain common with Spaniards: "When the river comes down from the mountains, it brings stones."
"By the river, you mean revolution? But you've had that before."
The conclusive answer to this was a maxim borrowed from the ring: "The fifth bull is never a bad one" (meaning, "Success comes to those who wait").
Our guide's English was put to a severe strain in the Alcazar, a palace largely Oriental, with interiors that outshine the Alhambra in resplendent color and gilding. There is, in particular, one round-domed ceiling constructed with an intricacy of interdependent supports, cones, truncations, dropping cusps, which is counterpoint made plastic; and in its inverted cup-like cysts the burnished gold glows like clotted honey. But, for all that, it does not equal the matchless Alhambra in arrangement, variety, or poetic surroundings. The memory of King Pedro the Cruel is closely connected with this Alcazar. From it he used to make night sallies into the town, by means of what Vincent termed a "soup-tureen passage," which brought him up through a trap-door somewhere in the thick of his subjects. Pedro, who lived in the fourteenth century, was a monarch of a severely playful disposition. He used to have the heads of people that were obnoxious to him cut off, and hung up over the lintel of his dressing-room door, where he could look at them while he was putting in his shirt-studs, or whenever he felt bored. In the extensive gardens, half Eastern and half mediæval, behind the palace, among the box and myrtle planted in forms of heraldic devices, among the palms and terraces and fountains, there run long paths, secretly perforated in places for fine jets of water. These are the traces of a still more ingenious amusement invented by Pedro. From a place of concealment he would watch until the ladies of the court, when promenading, had got directly over one of his underground—I mean "soup-tureen"—fountains, then he would turn a faucet, and drench them with a shower-bath from below.
There are other palaces in Sevilla, of which the Duke of Montpensier's San Telmo is the chief, and a model of uninteresting magnificence, aside from the valuable collection of old Spanish masters which it contains. These pictures were sent to Boston for a loan exhibition during the last revolution in Spain, in 1874; and although their aggregate worth is easily surpassed by the pictures preserved at the public gallery of Sevilla and at the Caridad Hospital, the Duke of Montpensier's possessions embrace a masterly portrait of Velazquez, by himself (repeated in the Museo at Valencia), and a charming "Madonna of the Swaddling Clothes," by Murillo. San Telmo was formerly a nautical college, having been founded by the son of Christopher Columbus.