“This perhaps is the ruin of some great palace?” he said.
“It is the bull-ring,” the shepherd corrected, “they say there was a city here once; you can see where the streets were; there are also bits of old churches and houses.”
“Valgame Dios!” exclaimed the stranger, “perhaps this was an important town, before it was ruined a hundred years ago or more!”
“No se sabé,” said the shepherd indifferently. He called his dog, who began to herd the sheep, running round and round them in a circle and barking furiously. The sun was westering; it lacked but an hour of setting; we were five miles from our dinner, and reluctantly we turned our backs on Italica, the buried city, with its twice ten hundred years, and drove back to Seville.
“It is a pestilential trait,—this pulling down old cities to build new;” said Pemberton, as we drove through the wretched village of Santiponce. “They pulled down Italica to get building material for Seville. Only the other day, hardly more than a hundred years ago, they took some of the stone of the old circus to make the road to Badajos. Men build cities as birds build nests; not many birds are satisfied with last year’s nests, not many men with other men’s cities.”
“Have you heard,” called Patsy from the other carriage, as with derisive hoots they passed us on the old Roman road, “Don Jaime goes with us to Cordova.”
“As you please,” said the Don; “or take ship and make a little crusade in the Mediterranean,—to Morocco, if you will.”
The next day we left Seville, stopping on the way to the station for a last look at the cathedral. We entered by way of the Court of Oranges, paused beneath the orange trees laden with fruit and blossoms, and drew long breaths of the delicious fragrance. Here Concepcion and Trinidad joined us. Both wore the mantilla, still de rigeur for early mass. Concepcion had a yellow rose in her curls to match her fan. Trinidad carried a bunch of white rosebuds; she was wearing her own dress to-day; it showed the curves of beauty better than that loose frock of Concepcion’s! Both young women looked fresh as roses with the night dew still on them, and smelt pleasantly of orange-flower water. As we stood gossiping by the old fountain, a pretty altar boy in white and scarlet finery came towards us, swinging a gold censer to keep the coals alight. As he passed he looked at Trinidad, and seemed to swing the censer towards her: for a moment we saw her in a cloud of blue incense smoke.
We made the tour of the cathedral, and took leave of Murillo’s Guardian Angel and his San Antonio. A shaft of sunlight carried the stain of the painted glass, ruby, topaz, emerald, to the columns under the round window of the Assumption. The golden mass bells tinkled; they were saying mass in the