e of the mothers of the flock
is pinioned much against her will by a street boy volunteering for the
office, and her head held tight while the goatherdess milks the measure
full at the other end.

IX

Everywhere about the cathedral beggars lay in wait, and the neighboring
streets were lively with bargains of prickly pears spread open on the
ground by old women who did not care whether any one bought or not.
There were also bargains in palmistry; and at one place a delightful
humorist was selling clothing at auction. He allured the bidders
by having his left hand dressed as a puppet and holding a sparkling
dialogue with it; when it did not respond to his liking he beat it with
his right hand, and every now and then he rang a little bell. He had a
pleased crowd about him in the sunny square; but it seemed to me
that all the newer part of Granada was lively with commerce in ample,
tram-trodden streets which gave the shops, larger than any we had seen
out of Madrid, a chance uncommon in the narrow ways of other Spanish
cities. Yet when I went to get money on my letter of credit, I found
the bank withdrawn from the modernity in a seclusion reached through a
lovely _patio._ We were seated in old-fashioned welcome, such as used to
honor a banker's customers in Venice, and all comers bowed and bade us
good day. The bankers had no such question of the different signatures
as vexed those of Valladolid, and after no more delay than due ceremony
demanded, I went away with both my money and my letter, courteously seen
to the door.

The guide, to whom we had fallen in the absence of our French-speaking
guide of the day before, spoke a little English, and he seemed to
grow in sympathetic intelligence as the morning passed. He made our
sightseeing include visits to the church of St. John of God, and the
church of San Geronimo, which was built by Gonsalvo de Cordova, the
Great Captain, and remains now a memorial to him. We rang at the door,
and after long delay a woman came and let us into an interior stranger
ever than her being there as custodian. It was frescoed from floor to
ceiling everywhere, except the places of the altars now kept by the
painted _retablos_ and the tombs and the statues of the various saints
and heroes. The _retablo_ of the high altar is almost more beautiful
than wonderful, but the chief glory of the place is in the kneeling
figures of the Great Captain and his wife, one on either side of the
altar, an