fterwards--_Dieu pardonnera; c'est
son metier_.

* * *

Three months later in the _Porvenir_, under the heading, 'Suicide of a
Priest,' I read that one of these very canons of the Cathedral at
Cordova had shot himself. A report was heard, said the journal, and the
Civil Guard arriving, found the man prostrate with blood pouring from
his ear, a revolver by his side. He was transported to the hospital, the
sacrament administered, and he died. In his pockets they found a
letter, a pawn-ticket, a woman's bracelet, and some peppermint lozenges.
He was thirty-five years old. The newspaper moralised as follows: 'When
even the illustrious order to which the defunct belonged is tainted with
such a crime, it is well to ask whither tends the incredulity of society
which finds an end to its sufferings in the barrel of a revolver. Let
moralists and philosophers combat with all their might this dreadful
tendency; let them make even the despairing comprehend that death is not
the highest good but the passage to an unknown world where, according to
Christian belief, the ill deeds of this existence are punished and the
virtuous rewarded.'

VIII

[Sidenote: Cordova]

Ronda, owing its peculiarities to the surrounding mountains, was not
really very characteristic of the country, and might equally well have
been an highland townlet in any part of Southern Europe. But Cordova
offers immediately the full sensation of Andalusia. It is absolutely a
Moorish city, white and taciturn, so that you are astonished to meet
people in European dress rather than Arabs, in shuffling yellow
slippers. The streets are curiously silent; for the carriage, as in
Tangiers, is done by mules and donkeys, which walk so quietly that you
never hear them. Sometimes you are warned by a deep-voiced '_Cuidado_,'
but more often a pannier brushing you against the wall brings the first
knowledge of their presence. On looking up you are again surprised to
see not a great shining negro in a burnouse, but a Spaniard in tight
trousers, with a broad-brimmed hat.

And Cordova has that sweet, exhilarating perfume of Andalusia than which
nothing gives more vividly the complete feeling of the country. Those
travellers must be obtuse of nostril who do not recognise different
smells, grateful or offensive, in different places; no other peculiarity
is more distinctive, so that an odour crossing by chance one's sense is
able to recall suddenly all the complicated impress