aboard; but why we were suffered to come
aboard, or why a supplementary fare should have been collected from us
remains one of those mysteries which I should once have liked to keep
all Spain.

We had to go quite outside of the station grounds to get a cab for our
hotel, but from this blow to our dignity I recovered a little later in
the day, when the king, attended by as small a troop of cavalry as I
suppose a king ever has with him, came driving by in the street where I
was walking. As he sat in his open carriage he looked very amiable, and
handsomer than most of the pictures make him. He seemed to be gazing at
me, and when he bowed I could do no less than return his salutation. As
I glanced round to see if people near me were impressed by our exchange
of civilities, I perceived an elderly officer next me. He was smiling as
I was, and I think he was in the delusion that the king's bow, which I
had so promptly returned, was intended for him.

VIII. CORDOVA AND THE WAY THERE

I should be sorry if I could believe that Cordova experienced the
disappointment in us, which I must own we felt in her; but our
disappointment was unquestionable, and I will at once offer it to
the reader as an inducement for him to go to Cordova with less lively
expectations than ours. I would by no means have him stay away; after
all, there is only one Cordova in the world which the capital of the
Caliphate of the West once filled with her renown; and if the great
mosque of Abderrahman is not so beautiful as one has been made to fancy
it, still it is wonderful, and could not be missed without loss.

I

Better, I should say, take the _rapido_ which leaves Madrid three times
a week at nine-thirty in the morning, than the night express which
leaves as often at the same hour in the evening. Since there are now
such good day trains on the chief Spanish lines, it is flying in the
face of Providence not to go by them; they might be suddenly taken off;
besides, they have excellent restaurant-cars, and there is, moreover,
always the fascinating and often the memorable landscape which they pass
through. By no fault of ours that I can remember, our train was rather
crowded; that is, four or five out of the eight places in our corridor
compartment were taken, and we were afraid at every stop that more
people would get in, though I do not know that it was our anxieties
kept them out. For the matter of that, I do not know why I employed an