th the air of a king
marching to conquest, and rather than show vulgar curiosity, strode past
scarcely deigning a look at the automobile, though it was as likely as not
the first he had ever seen. His goats, equally unconcerned, strayed among
our wheels without hurry, and when they chose clattered off with much play
of little cloven hoofs on cobblestones. A sharper note of contrast could
hardly have been struck, Dick and I said to each other. A meeting between
the automobile, latest product of man's restless invention, made to fly
across states and continents, and the goat-herd whose knowledge of the
world might extend ten miles beyond the place where, since his birth, he
had carried on one of the most ancient occupations on the globe. So the
ages seemed united, and Virgil and Theocritus brought suddenly face to
face with Maeterlinck and Henley; and an instant later we had taken a
small excursion into the middle ages of superstition. Pilar told us
gravely that in a volume of "Dreams and Love Lore," valued beyond all
other books by the young girls of Andalucia, one read that it brought good
luck to lovers to meet a flock of goats when starting on a journey in the
morning.

Thus encouraged to hope for what I dared not expect, we set off, again and
again finding ourselves hard put to it to get the long chassis of the
Gloria round sharp corners of narrow streets. More than once it could be
done only by backing the car, a feat which was witnessed with cries of
astonishment by a crowd of water-sellers with painted tin vessels, milkmen
on donkey back, knife-grinders, and Murillo cherubs who were following to
see us off. Thus attended we slid down the steep hill which twisted past
the old fortifications of Toledo, and brought us out at last upon the
Puente de Alcantara, that most wonderful bridge of all the world.

The Tagus, grandest river in Spain, and golden as old father Tiber
himself, plunged through his narrow gorge a hundred feet below the arch of
stone, and on either hand stood up the sun-baked cliffs, Toledo seated on
their summit, crowned with towers, like an empress upon her throne. Far
beneath, in the swirl of yellow water were Moorish mills, white with age,
grinding corn for their new masters.

As we passed across the bridge at a foot-pace between strings of tasselled
and jingling mules, little grey donkeys loaded with pigskins of wine,
brown jugs of olive oil, or bags of meal, and charming children who
offered u