but to a certain degree it was rich, rich in its gilded
woodwork and in the brocade that adorned the pillars; and I felt that
these Spanish churches lent a certain dignity to life: for all the
careless flippancy of Andalusia they still remained to strike a nobler
note. I forgot willingly that the land was priest-ridden and
superstitious, so that a Spaniard could tell me bitterly that there were
but two professions open to his countrymen, the priesthood and the
bull-ring. It was pleasant to rest in that cool and fragrant darkness.

My host was an archaeologist, and we ate surrounded by broken
earthenware, fragmentary mosaics, and grinning skulls. It was curious
afterwards to wander in the graveyard which, with indefatigable zeal, he
had excavated, among the tombs of forgotten races, letting oneself down
to explore the subterranean cells. The paths he had made in the giant
cemetery were lined with a vast number of square sandstone boxes which
had contained human ashes; and now, when the lid was lifted, a green
lizard or a scorpion darted out. From the hill I saw stretched before me
the great valley of the Guadalquivir: with the squares of olive and of
ploughed field, and the various greens of the corn, it was like a vast,
multi-coloured carpet. But later, with the sunset, black clouds arose,
splendidly piled upon one another; and the twilight air was chill and
grey. A certain sternness came over the olive-groves, and they might
well have served as a reproach to the facile Andaluz; for their cold
passionless green seemed to offer a warning to his folly.

At night my host left me to sleep in the village, and I lay in bed alone
in the little house among the tombs; it was very silent. The wind sprang
up and blew about me, whistling through the windows, whistling weirdly;
and I felt as though the multitudes that had been buried in that old
cemetery filled the air with their serried numbers, a vast, silent
congregation waiting motionless for they knew not what. I recalled a
gruesome fact that my friend had told me: not far from there, in tombs
that he had disinterred the skeletons lay huddled spasmodically, with
broken skulls and a great stone by the side; for when a man, he said,
lay sick unto death, his people took him, and placed him in his grave,
and with the stone killed him.

* * *

In the morning I set out again. It was five-and-thirty miles to Ecija,
but a new high road stretched from place to place and I expected ea