e into
irregular angular spaces with a church or a convent or a nobleman's
house looking into them.

VI

The noblemen's houses often showed a severely simple facade to the
square or street, and hid their inner glories with what could have been
fancied a haughty reserve if it had not been for the frankness with
which they opened their _patios_ to the gaze of the stranger, who, when
he did not halt his carriage before them, could enjoy their hospitality
from a sidewalk sometimes eighteen inches wide. The passing tram-car
might grind him against the tall grilles which were the only barriers
to the _patios,_ but otherwise there would be nothing to spoil his
enjoyment of those marble floors and tiled walls and fountains potted
round with flowering plants. In summer he could have seen the family
life there; and people who are of such oriental seclusion otherwise
will sometimes even suffer the admiring traveler to come as well as
look within. But one who would not press their hospitality so far could
reward his forbearance by finding some of the _patios_ too new-looking,
with rather a glare from their tiles and marbles, their painted iron
pillars, and their glass roofs which the rain comes through in the
winter. The ladies sit and sew there, or talk, if they prefer, and
receive their friends, and turn night into day in the fashion of
climates where they are so easily convertible. The _patio_ is the place
of that peculiarly Spanish rite, the _tertulia,_ and the family nightly
meets its next of kin and then its nearer and farther friends there with
that Latin regularity which may also be monotony. One _patio_ is often
much like another, though none was perhaps of so much public interest
as the _patio_ of the lady who loved a bull-fighter and has made her
_patio_ a sort of shrine to him. The famous _espada_ perished in his
heroic calling, no worse if no better than those who saw him die, and
now his bust is in plain view, with a fit inscription recognizing his
worth and prowess, and with the heads of some of the bulls he slew.

Under that clement sky the elements do not waste the works of man as
elsewhere, and many of the houses of Seville are said to be such as the
Moors built there. We did not know them from the Christian houses; but
there are no longer any mosques, while in our wanderings we had the
pretty constant succession of the convents which, when they are still in
the keeping of their sisterhoods and brotherhoo