through the device practised in defeating the pope
who proposed to abolish it. He ordained that it should continue only
as long as the boys' actual costumes lasted; but by renewing these
carefully wherever they began to wear out, they have become practically
imperishable.

If we missed this attraction of the cathedral, we had the high good
fortune to witness another ceremony peculiar to it, but perhaps less
popularly acceptable. The building had often suffered from earthquakes,
and on the awful day, _dies irae,_ of the great Lisbon earthquake,
during mass and at the moment of the elevation of the Host, when the
worshipers were on their knees, there came such a mighty shock in
sympathy with the far-off cataclysm that the people started to their
feet and ran out of the cathedral. If the priests ran after them, as
soon as the apparent danger was past they led the return of their flock
and resumed the interrupted rite. It was, of course, by a miracle that
the temple was spared, and when it was realized how scarcely Seville
had escaped the fate of Lisbon it was natural that the event should
be dramatized in a perpetual observance. Every year now, on the 1st of
November, the clergy leave the cathedral at a chosen moment of the mass,
with much more stateliness than in the original event, and lead the
people out of one portal, to return with them by another for the
conclusion of the ceremonial.

[Illustration: 23 THE CATHEDRAL AND TOWER OF THE GIRALDA]

We waited long for the climax, but at last we almost missed it through
the overeagerness of the guide I had chosen out of many that petitioned.
He was so politely, so forbearingly insistent in his offer to see that
we were vigilantly cared for, that I must have had a heart harder than
Peter the Cruel's to have denied him, and he planted us at the most
favorable point for the function in the High Chapel, with instructions
which portal to hurry to when the movement began, and took his peseta
and went his way. Then, while we confidingly waited, he came rushing
back and with a great sweep of his hat wafted us to the door which he
had said the procession would go out by, but which he seemed to have
learned it would come in by, and we were saved from what had almost been
his fatal error. I forgave him the more gladly because I could rejoice
in his returning to repair his error, although he had collected his
money; and with a heart full of pride in his verification of my
theory of