“Open it, please. How is this, a ham?”
“Our own. The tax was paid when the pig was killed; twelve pesetas. It was far too much.”
“That is another matter. You must pay the tax on provisions brought into the city as well.” The officer weighed the ham, and began to make a calculation with pencil and note-book. “There is also to be added the fine for not having declared the ham.”
The lady’s eyes snapped angrily, as she gave the officer a piece of her mind. “You are a miserable loafer! It is to pay salaries to such lazy fellows as you that honest people are robbed of their honest money!”
It was growing late. By the time the ham was settled for, the vivid blue of the western sky had turned soft apple-green. We climbed a crazy stair to the window of the gate, to avoid a drove of cattle driven across the bridge by a vaquero in a brown capote. The comfortable smell of kine came in at the window. On the other side of the Guadalquiver, in the golden haze of dust kicked up by those silly, helter-skeltering cows, lay Cordova. Before us rose the great Mosque; in the centre the towering masonry of the Christian Cathedral stood out in bold outline against the distant Sierra. The sun set quietly in the quiet sky; a few minutes after, the whole heaven was aflame with the glorious crimson after-glow; the river ran red; the whole earth shone with the reflection. The sunset was like the death of some great and unsuspected saint, some humble man, the glory of whose life is only known when he has gone and the whole world is filled with the light of the soul that has just passed from it.
“The moon will soon be up,” said Patsy. “Let us wait for it. We are not likely to see sunset and moonrise from Cordova bridge again.”
The custom-house officer made room for us on his wooden bench. As we sat watching the swallows flit back and forth over the river, Patsy told us stories about the great men who had lived at Cordova, and we all made believe we saw them cross the old bridge. A tall military man with a clanking sword passed through the gate.
“There goes Marcellus, the Tribune who conquered Cordova for Rome; our friend the engineer must have come here soon after him; isn’t it a pity we can’t find his name, when such silly ones are remembered?”
“He built a good bridge; does it matter whether he was called Caius or Cassius?”
“Why, yes, it matters to me,” Patsy persisted. “There was another Marcellus who came to Cordova later, in Julius Cæsar’s time. How talent runs in families! Cæsar sent him to rebuild the town after he had half destroyed it for taking Pompey’s side in that old quarrel we boys used to fight over again at school. The Senecas came from here, too; there is a square named for them. You remember the story about Seneca’s wife? When Nero sent word that Seneca must die, both he and his wife opened the veins in their arms. Seneca, who was much older than his wife, died first, whereupon Madam’s women bound up her veins, and she lived several years after. There was talent in that family, too; the father was a writer, and Lucan, the poet, was either a cousin or nephew. Hullo! Look at the folds of that old beggar’s capa; doesn’t it look like a toga? Now remember that cantankerous face of Seneca’s in the bust at the Naples Museum, and if you can’t see Nero’s tutor pottering over that old bridge you’ve no imagination!”