Spanish word for word throughout the morning.
He led us from the bull-ring to the church known to few visitors, I
believe, where the last male descendant of Montezuma lies entombed,
under a fit inscription, and then through the Plaza past the college of
Montezuma, probably named for this heir of the Aztec empire. I do not
know why the poor prince should have come to die in Ronda, but there are
many things in Ronda which I could not explain: especially why a certain
fruit is sold by an old woman on the bridge. Its berries are threaded on
a straw and look like the most luscious strawberries but taste like
turpentine, though they may be avoided under the name of _madrones._ But
on no account would I have the reader avoid the Church of Santa Maria
Mayor. It is so dark within that he will not see the finely carved choir
seats without the help of matches, or the pictures at all; but it is
worth realizing, as one presently may, that the hither part of the
church is a tolerably perfect mosque of Moorish architecture, through
which you must pass to the Renaissance temple of the Christian faith.
Near by is the Casa de Mondragon which he should as little miss if he
has any pleasure in houses with two _patios_ perching on the gardened
brink of a precipice and overlooking one of the most beautiful valleys
in the whole world, with donkey-trains climbing up from it over the face
of the cliff. The garden is as charming as red geraniums and blue
cabbages can make a garden, and the house is fascinatingly quaint and
unutterably Spanish, with the inner _patio_ furnished in bright-colored
cushions and wicker chairs, and looked into by a brown wooden gallery. A
stately lemon-colored elderly woman followed us silently about, and the
whole place was pervaded by a smell that was impossible at the time and
now seems incredible.
III
I here hesitate before a little adventure which I would not make too
much of nor yet minify: it seems to me so gentle and winning. I had long
meant to buy a donkey, and I thought I could make no fitter beginning to
this end than by buying a donkey's head-stall in the country where
donkeys are more respected and more brilliantly accoutred than anywhere
else in the whole earth. When I ventured to suggest my notion, or call
it dream, to our young guide, he instantly imagined it in its full
beauty, and he led us directly to a shop in the principal street which
for the richness and variety of the coloring in its display might have
been a florist's shop. Donkeys' trappings in brilliant yellow,
vermillion, and magenta hung from the walls, and head-stalls,
gorgeously woven and embroidered, dangled from the roof. Among them and
under them the donkeys' harness-maker sat at his work, a short, brown,
handsome man with eyes that seemed the more prominent because of his
close-shaven head. We chose a headstall of such splendor that no heart
could have resisted it, and while he sewed to it the twine muzzle which
Spanish donkeys wear on their noses for the protection of the public,
our guide expatiated upon us, and said, among other things to our
credit, that we were from America and were going to take the head-stall
back with us.
The harness-maker lifted his head alertly. "Where, in America?" and we
answered for ourselves, "From New York."
Then the harness-maker rose and went to an inner doorway and called
through it something that brought out a comely, motherly woman as alert
as himself. She verified our statement for herself, and having paved the
way firmly for her next question she asked, "Do you know the Escuela
Mann?"
As well as our surprise would let us, we said that we knew the Mann
School, both where and what it was.
She waited with a sort of rapturous patience before saying, "My son, our
eldest son, was educated at the Escuela Mann, to be a teacher, and now
he is a professor in the Commercial College in Puerto Rico."
If our joint interest in this did not satisfy her expectation I for my
part can never forgive myself; certainly I tried to put as much passion
into my interest as I could, when she added that his education at the
Escuela Mann was without cost to him. By this time, in fact, I was so
proud of the Escuela Mann that I could not forbear proclaiming that a
member of my own family, no less than the father of the grandson for
whose potential donkey I was buying that headstall, was one of the
architects of the Escuela Mann building.
She now vanished within, and when she came out she brought her daughter,
a gentle young girl who sat down and smiled upon us through the rest of
the interview. She brought also an armful of books, the Spanish-English
Ollendorff which her son had used in studying our language, his
dictionary, and the copy-book where he had written his exercises, with
two photographs of him, not yet too Americanized; and she showed us not
only how correctly but how beautifully his exercises were done. If I did
not admire these enough, again I cannot forgive myself, but she seemed
satisfied with what I did, and she talked on about him, not too
loquaciously, but lovingly and lovably as a mother should, and proudly
as the mother of such a boy should, though without vainglory; I have
forgotten to say that she had a certain distinction of face, and was
appropriately dressed in black.
