“Tell them what you were telling me,” said Patsy. “He has been here ever so long, and has ferreted out a lot of interesting things about Cordova.”
“There is not much to tell that you don’t know. The old game of civilization is going on in the world to-day just as it was then. You have only to cross the Straits of Gibraltar, and go over to Morocco and up into the Atlas Mountains to find a Kabyl village very like the primitive Iberian pueblo the Greeks and Phœnicians found here. The French may be a little quicker about civilizing Morocco than the Phœnicians and Greeks were in civilizing the Peninsula, though I doubt it.”
“You said,” Patsy insisted, “that you had seen some things in a museum that gave you a pretty clear idea of how they lived in Cordova, when it belonged to Carthage.”
“I saw some recent finds made in a mound not far from here,” said the Argentino. “A bust which they call the Lady of Elche that has something of the early Greek feeling. After seeing these things and reading all I could lay hands on about them, I came to the conclusion that Cordova must have been a pretty civilized place under the Republic of Carthage. The people had gold and silver vessels,—the Greeks have a story that the anchors of their galleys were gold. They certainly had ivory combs, for I have seen them, and Greek vases and Celtic pottery—geometric raised patterns and all—and coins stamped with a winged horse. Then we know all about their wool, what fine cloth they made, and that famous scarlet dye of the kermes that ran the Tyrian purple so hard in the markets of the East.”
“Those markets of the East another republic hankers to supply,” Patsy put in.
“Take up the white man’s burden and put it on the back
Of every yaller nigger and kick him when he’s slack.
They’ve got to wear our cotton, they’ve got to drink our gin,
And pay our missionaries to save their souls from sin.”
He threw open the window and leaned out.
“It has stopped raining. My wig! do you smell the flowers? I can make out jasmine, acacia, and mignonette. Spanish flowers seem to grow with their perfume already triple distilled.”
“They are the most fragrant in the world,” said the Argentino. “Don’t sleep with your windows open, if you are afraid of headache! Now you want to go to bed, this Son of the Way and I will say good night to you.”
A few minutes later Patsy’s laugh, a whiff of the Argentino’s cigarette, some broken fragments of their talk floated in at the window, as they walked up and down in the garden outside.