the readiest wit, a
manner to beget confidence. In fact it is so difficult to lie
systematically and well that the ardour of the Andalusians in that
pursuit can be ascribed only to an innate characteristic. Their
imaginations, indeed, are so exuberant that the bald fact is to them
grotesque and painful. They are like writers in love with words for
their own sake, who cannot make the plainest statement without a gay
parade of epithet and metaphor. They embroider and decorate, they colour
and enhance the trivial details of circumstance. They must see
themselves perpetually in an attitude; they must never fail to be
effective. They lie for art's sake, without reason or rhyme, from mere
devilry, often when it can only harm them. Mendacity then becomes an
intellectual exercise, such as the poet's sonneteering to an imaginary
lady-love.

But the Cordovan very naturally holds himself in no such unflattering
estimation. The motto of his town avers that he is a warlike person and
a wise one:

Cordoba, casa de guerrera gente
Y de sabiduria clara fuente!

And the history thereof, with its University and its Khalifs, bears him
out. Art and science flourished there when the rest of Europe was
enveloped in mediaeval darkness: when our Saxon ancestors lived in dirty
hovels, barbaric brutes who knew only how to kill, to eat, and to
propagate their species, the Moors of Cordova cultivated all the
elegancies of life from verse-making to cleanliness.

* * *

I was standing on the bridge. The river flowed tortuously through the
fertile plain, broad and shallow, and in it the blue sky and the white
houses of the city were brightly mirrored. In the distance, like a
vapour of amethyst, rose the mountains; while at my feet, in mid-stream,
there were two mills which might have been untouched since Moorish days.
There had been no rain for months, the water stood very low, and here
and there were little islands of dry yellow sand, on which grew reeds
and sedge. In such a spot might easily have wandered the half-naked
fisherman of the oriental tale, bewailing in melodious verse the
hardness of his lot; since to his net came no fish, seeking a broken pot
or a piece of iron wherewith to buy himself a dinner. There might he
find a ring half-buried in the sand, which, when he rubbed to see if it
were silver, a smoke would surely rise from the water, increasing till
the light of day was obscured; and half dead with fear, he would
percei