“The fourth rule,” said J., “is go slow. Yesterday three hundred tourists saw Seville in four hours. They were driven all over the place in batches, each man and woman of them tagged with the card of the hotel where they were billeted to dine. The Liberal said this morning that it was better to be four hundred years behind the world than to be in such a hurry. I am not sure the Liberal is not right.”
That afternoon, Concepcion called for us in a smart two-seated cart drawn by fawn-colored mules with silken ears, varnished hoofs, and jingling bells. It was “up to her,” Pemberton said, to show us the social end of the Feria.
“Estoy vestida de maya!” she cried gleefully; “does it please them?”
“How well dressed she is, a preciosity!” Patsy’s vocabulary was growing. To be vestida de maya means to wear the lovely old Andalusian costume, still good form for Feria and bull-fights. Concepcion wore a yellow crape manton de Manilla (the fringe was ten inches long) embroidered with butterflies and roses; a white, blond lace mantilla, gold satin skirt with overdress of black net and chenille dots, lace mittens and tiny gold shoes. She carried the sort of fan collectors outside of Spain keep in a glass case,—the sticks of delicately carved mother-of-pearl; the painting, charming, eighteenth century miniature work. The artist had represented the two serious affairs in woman’s life: religion,—illustrated by a scene from sacred history, Jerusalem with David standing before Saul; and love-making,—illustrated by an Arcadian vale, where a patched and powdered shepherdess and a silk-stockinged shepherd looked fondly at each other.
Concepcion took us first to the Parque Maria Luisa, once royal property; now a people’s pleasure ground, more garden than park, with thickets of camelias, white, red, and pink, and wildernesses of roses climbing over rustic arbors, hiding dead trees, or blooming sedately in well-trimmed beds. We would have lingered in this paradise among the palms and orange trees—from an ilex grove the long, trilling cadence of a nightingale gave warning that the evening service of song was beginning—but Concepcion objected that there was nobody there, and gave the order: “To Las Delicias.”
Four lines of carriages moved at a foot pace up and down the wide paseo. Groups of horsemen, officers and civilians picked their way through the throng. The promenades on either side were crowded with pedestrians. The defile of beauty was dazzling; the señoritas were all smiles and animation, using their eyes to deadly purpose; in Andalusia flirtation is not a lost, even a decadent art. Patsy, wounded on every side, groaned aloud, “I wish I was a Turk, I wish I was the Sultan of Turkey!”
“In his heart, every man is a Turk!”
“Starts so,—some learn that the best of all is to come home from a flower show, and find the single rose in the flower-pot on the window-sill, sweeter than all the rest.”
So they gossipped in the carriage, while the mouse-colored mules fretted at the slow pace!
The west end, the fashionable quarter of the toy city of the Feria, has neat toy streets, dainty casetas like dolls’ houses, cafés, and clubs. From Conception’s account, it would seem that the Alcalde had merely waved his wand, and from the bare ground of the old quemadero the fairy city had sprung complete.