l. We did not think of those six
Murillos when we went to the hospital; we knew nothing of the peculiar
beauty and dignity of the church; but we came because we wished to see
what the repentance of a man could do for others after a youth spent in
wicked riot. The gentle, pensive little Mother who received us carefully
said at once that the hospital was not for the sick, but only for the
superannuated and the poor and friendless who came to pass a night or
an indefinite time in it, according to the pressure of their need; and
after showing us the rich little church, she led us through long, clean
corridors where old men lay in their white beds or sat beside them
eating their breakfasts, very savory-looking, out of ample white bowls.
Some of them saluted us, but the others we excused because they were so
preoccupied. In a special room set apart for them were what we brutally
call tramps, but who doubtless are known in Spain for indigent brethren
overtaken on their wayfaring without a lodging for the night. Here
they could come for it and cook their supper and breakfast at the large
circular fireplace which filled one end of their room. They rose at our
entrance and bowed; and how I wish I could have asked them, every one,
about their lives!

There was nothing more except the doubt of that dear little Mother when
I gave her a silver dollar for her kindness. She seemed surprised and
worried, and asked, "Is it for the charity or for me?" What could I do
but answer, "Oh, for your Grace," and add another for the charity.
She still looked perplexed, but there was no way out of our
misunderstanding, if it was one, and we left her with her sweet,
troubled face between the white wings of her cap, like angel's wings
mounting to it from her shoulders. Then we went to look at the statue of
the founder bearing a hapless stranger in his arms in a space of flowers
before the hospital, where a gardener kept watch that no visitor should
escape without a bunch worth at least a peseta. He had no belief that
the peseta could possibly be for the charity, and the poverty of the
poor neighborhood was so much relieved by the mere presence of the
hospital that it begged of us very little as we passed through.

IX

We had expected to go to Granada after a week in Seville, but man is
always proposing beyond his disposing in strange lands as well as at
home, and we were fully a fortnight in the far lovelier capital. In
the mean time we had