wonder to us that the spruce young officers of Madrid detest being quartered here. What have they to do in a town where there is not even a decent café, and social existence is not partially understood? And the pleasures of walking round a romantic city cannot be offered them as adequate distraction. For us, of course, it suffices as long as taste keeps us at Toledo, and each walk has its fresh surprise, if not a fresh enchantment. Impossible to find a more intricate, maze-like arrangement of streets, and some of the passages behind the Alcázar, and round by the Cathedral look so dreadful and perilous that the marvel is there are to be found persons with sufficient courage to dwell in such places. One is disposed to agree with Robida the French artist, who attributes the excellence of Toledan steel in bygone ages to the desperate danger of the streets, since nobody then but a citizen armed to the teeth would be insane enough to leave his house.
But if the main features of the Zocodover have not changed, the fulness of its life has diminished. In the sixteenth century the Tuesday markets of the place were widely famous. Don Enrique IV. granted the citizens a free market every Tuesday in return for Toledo’s gracious reception of him. For Toledo, as I have shown, did not spoil her rulers, and like all ill-tempered persons, she received a disproportionate acknowledgment of her rare soft moods. Fruit, flowers, provisions of every kind, birds, fish, oil, honey, bacon and cheese were sold, and the exceeding moderation of the prices, owing to the untaxed sales, attracted crowds from all parts. The influx of trade even at this period, though the Jews and Moors, source of her wealth, art and civilisation, had been destituted and expelled, was enormous, so that the magistrates held audience every Tuesday to judge the cases of purchase and sale, and see that the peace was kept. Trade was then so important an affair in Toledo, that priests and magistrates kept the interests of the traders in view in the settlement of church and legal matters, and mass was celebrated over the archway leading to Cervantes’ inn and Cardinal Mendoza’s most beautiful hospital (see façade of Santa Cruz) in a little chapel dedicated to The Precious Blood, expressly set aside for the market people, at the earliest hour of day to suit them, and the audience chamber timed its hearing of civil cases at an hour in the interest of the same class, so that business should not be interfered with. There was a smaller market up near Santo Tomé, ruled and protected like that of the Zocodover, with also a high chapel for service for
the market folk. One side was given over to the butchers’ shops, above which was inscribed: “Reigning in Spain the most high and powerful Felipe II., he has ordered in the town of Toledo these butchers’ shops with the concurrence of Perafande Ribera, his magistrate. Year MDLXXXIX.” There was another little meat market down in the old place of Sanchez Minaya, near the hospital of the Misericordia. The slaughter-houses were in the wide place close to the Puertas del Cambron and San Martin, where, as Pisa says, “The air of the open country came to cleanse away the evil odour of the dead remains.” Grain and wheat were sold near the Alcázar, down by the Cardinal’s hospital.