In self-defense I urge my knowledge of a military school in
the Alcazar, where and in the street leading up to it we saw some
companies of the comely and kindly-looking cadets. I know also that
there are public night schools where those so minded may study the arts
and letters, as our guide was doing in certain directions. Now that
there are no longer any Jews in Toledo, and the Arabs to whom they
betrayed the Gothic capital have all been Christians or exiles for many
centuries, we felt that we represented the whole alien element of the
place; there seemed to be at least no other visitors of our lineage or
language.
VI
We were going to spend the rest of the day driving out through the city
into the country beyond the Tagus, and we drove off in our really
splendid turnout through swarms of beggars whose prayers our horses'
bells drowned when we left them to their despair at the hotel door. At
the moment of course we believe that it was a purely dramatic misery
which the wretched creatures represented; but sometimes I have since had
moments of remorse in which I wish I had thrown big and little dogs
broadcast among them. They could not all have been begging for the
profit or pleasure of it; some of them were imaginably out of work and
worthily ragged as I saw them, and hungry as I begin to fear them.
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