Even with only a few minutes of a scant quarter-hour to spare, I would
not have any one miss seeing the cloister, from which the Catholic Kings
used to enter the church by the gallery to those balcony capitals, but
which the common American must now see by going outside the church. The
cloister is turned to the uses of an industrial school, as we were glad
to realize because our guide, whom we liked so much, was a night student
there. It remains as beautiful and reverend as if it were of no secular
use, full of gentle sculptures, with a garden in the middle, raised
above the pavement with a border of thin tiles, and flower-pots standing
on their coping, all in the shadow of tall trees, overhanging a deep
secret-keeping well. From this place, where you will be partly sheltered
from the rain, your next profitable sally through the storm will be to
Santa Maria la Blanca, once the synagogue of the richest Jews of Toledo,
but now turned church in spite of its high authorization as a place of
Hebrew worship. It was permitted them to build it because they declared
they were of that tribe of Israel which, when Caiaphas, the High Priest,
sent round to the different tribes for their vote whether Jesus should
live or die, alone voted that He should live.
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