passed through the streets, near the Catholic priests
or the rabbis with their long, loose gowns. In the outskirts might be
seen men almost naked, with no other clothing than a sheep-skin tunic,
guiding flocks of pigs, just like the shepherds in the Odyssey.
Dervishes, with their aspect of dementia, chanted motionless in a
crossway, enveloped in clouds of flies, awaiting the aid of the good
believers.

A great part of the population was composed of Israelitish descendants
of the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal. The oldest and most
conservative were clad just like their remote ancestors with large
kaftans striped with striking colors. The women, when not imitating the
European fashions, usually wore a picturesque garment that recalled the
Spanish apparel of the Middle Ages. Here they were not mere brokers or
traders as in the rest of the world. The necessities of the city
dominated by them had made them pick up all the professions, becoming
artisans, fishermen, boatmen, porters and stevedores of the harbor.
They still kept the Castilian tongue as the language of the hearth like
an original flag whose waving reunited their scattered souls,--a
Castilian in the making, soft and without consistency like one
newly-born.

"Are you a Spaniard?" they said brokenly to Captain Ferragut. "My
ancestors were born there. It is a beautiful land."

But they did not wish to return to it. The country of their grandsires
inspired a certain amount of terror in them, and they feared that upon
seeing them return, the present-day Spaniards would banish the
bullfights and reestablish the Inquisition, organizing an _auto de fe_
every Sunday.

Hearing them speak his language, the captain recalled a certain
date--1492. In the very year that Christopher Columbus had made his
first voyage, discovering the Indies, the Jews were expelled from the
Spanish peninsula, and Nebrija brought out the first Castilian grammar.
These Spaniards had left their native land months before their idiom
had been codified for the first time.

A sailor of Genoa, an old friend of Ulysses, took him to one of the
harbor cafes, where the merchant captains used to gather together.
These were the only ones wearing civilian clothes among the crowds of
land and sea officers who crowded the divans, obstructed the tables,
and grouped themselves before the doorway.

These Mediterranean vagabonds who oftentimes could not converse
together because of the diversity of th