"

She drew a card from her pocket in a quiet, ladylike way and placed it
in our hands with a pathetic, appealing look that haunts us still.

We watched her turn away and noted the quiet, graceful movement with
which she glided down the aisle and disappeared through a distant door;
and our keenest sympathy went out to the poor, fair, frail creature
whose burden of life was greater than she could bear. Could by any
possibility a way of escape be found for her?

We passed out of the church, which now seemed laden with an atmosphere
of human sorrow and suffering, glad to escape to the free air and pure
skies of heaven. From the Cathedral Square we turned into the narrow
streets with their great grey palaces and enormous courtyards all full
of suggestions of the past centuries. But the mighty have fallen: Aragon
has not escaped decline any more than the rest of Spain.

CHAPTER XXIII.

IN ZARAGOZA.

Bygone days--Sumptuous roosting--Old exchange--Traders of
taste--Glory of Aragon--Cathedral of La Seo--Modernised
exterior--Interior charms and mesmerises--Next to
Barcelona--Magnificent effect--Parish church--Moorish ceiling--Tomb
of Bernardo de Aragon--The old priest--Waxes
enthusiastic--Supernatural effect--Statuette of Benedict
XIII.--Mysterious chiaroscuro--One exception--Alonza the
Warrior--Moorish tiles--Bishop's palace--Frugal meal--Trace of old
Zaragoza--Fifteenth century house--Juanita--Streets of the
city--Caesarea Augusta--Worship of the Virgin--Alonzo the
Moor--Determined resistance--Days of struggle--Falling--Return to
prosperity--Fair maid of Zaragoza--The Aljaferia--Ancient palace of
the Moorish kings--Injured by Suchet--Salon of Santa
Isabel--Spanish cafe--Four generations--Lovely voice--Lamartine's
_Le Lac_--Recognised--Reading between the lines--Out in the night
air--An inspiration--Night vision of El Pilar--In the far future.

The prosperity of Zaragoza to-day is entirely commercial, but on a small
scale. It is not a great financial or manufacturing town. The rooms that
once echoed with the voices of dames and cavaliers, flashed with the
blaze of jewels and the gleam of scabbards, have now in many cases been
turned into stables. The courtyards, once crowded with mailed horsemen
setting out for the wars, are now given over to the fowls of the air,
that roost in the eaves and have little idea how sumptuously and
arti