e started for there."

"No reason at all," said Lyaeus with a laugh as he went in the door of
the wineshop.

When they came out they found Don Alonso waiting for them, holding his
horse by the bridle.

"The Spartans," he said with a smile, "never drank wine on the march."

"How far are we from Toledo?" asked Telemachus. "It was nice of you to
wait for us."

"About a league, five kilometers, nothing.... I wanted to see your
faces when you first saw the town. I think you will appreciate it."

"Let's walk fast," said Telemachus. "There are some things one doesn't
want to wait for."

"It will be sunset and the whole town will be on the _paseo_ in front
of the hospital of San Juan Bautista.... This is Sunday of Carnival;
people will be dressed up in masks and very noisy. It's a day on which
they play tricks on strangers."

"Here's the trick they played me at the last town," said Lyaeus
agitating his bag of figs. "Let's eat some. I'm sure the Spartans ate
figs on the road. Will Rosinante,--I mean will your horse eat them?" He
put his hand with some figs on it under the horse's mouth. The horse
sniffed noisily out of black nostrils dappled with pink and then
reached for the figs. Lyaeus wiped his hand on the seat of his pants
and they proceeded.

"Toledo is symbolically the soul of Spain," began Don Alonso after a
few moments of silent walking. "By that I mean that through the many
Spains you have seen and will see is everywhere an undercurrent of
fantastic tragedy, Greco on the one hand, Goya on the other, Morales,
Gallegos, a great flame of despair amid dust, rags, ulcers, human life
rising in a sudden paean out of desolate abandoned dun-colored spaces.
To me, Toledo expresses the supreme beauty of that tragic farce.... And
the apex, the victory, the deathlessness of it is in El Greco.... How
strange it is that it should be that Cypriote who lived in such
Venetian state in a great house near the abandoned synagogue,
scandalizing us austere Spaniards by the sounds of revelry and
unabashed music that came from it at meal-times, making pert sayings
under the nose of humorless visitors like Pacheco, living solitary in a
country where he remained to his death misunderstood and alien and
where two centuries thought of him along with Don Quixote as a
madman,--how strange that it should be he who should express most
flamingly all that was imperturbable in Toledo.... I have often
wondered whether that fiery vitality of sp