to form the habit of
going in by other gates, but the Gate of Pardon finally prevailed; there
was always a gantlet of cabmen to be run beside it, which brought our
sins home to us. It led into the badly paved Court of Oranges, where the
trees seem planted haphazard and where there used also to be fountains.
Gate and court are remnants of the mosque, patterned upon that of
Cordova by one of the proud Moorish kings of Seville, and burned by the
Normans when they took and sacked his city. His mosque had displaced the
early Christian basilica of San Vicente, which the still earlier temple
to Venus Salambo had become. Then, after the mosque was rebuilt, the
good San Fernando in his turn equipped it with a Gothic choir and
chapels and turned it into the cathedral, which was worn out with
pious uses when the present edifice was founded, in their _folie des
grandeurs,_ by those glorious madmen in the first year of the fifteenth
century.

IV

Little of this learning troubled me in my visits to the cathedral, or
even the fact that, next to St. Peter's, it was the largest church in
the world. It was sufficient to itself by mere force of architectural
presence, without the help of incidents or measurements. It was a city
in itself, with a community of priests and sacristans dwelling in it,
and a floating population of sightseers and worshipers always passing
through it. The first morning we had submitted to make the round of
the chapels, patiently paying to have each of them unlocked and wearily
wondering at their wonders, but only sympathizing really with the stern
cleric who showed the ceremonial vestments and jewels of the cathedral,
and whose bitter face expressed, or seemed to express, abhorrence of our
whole trivial tourist tribe. After that morning we took our curiosity
into our own keeping and looked at nothing that did not interest us, and
we were interested most in those fellow-beings who kept coming and going
all day long.

[Illustration: 22 IN ATTITUDES OF SILENT DEVOTION]

Chiefly, of course, they were women. In Catholic countries women have
either more sins to be forgiven than the men, or else they are sorrier
for them; and here, whether there was service or not, they were dropped
everywhere in veiled and motionless prayer. In Seville the law of the
mantilla is rigorously enforced. If a woman drives, she may wear a hat;
but if she walks, she must wear a mantilla under pain of being pointed
at by the finger