That was a statue which, seen
in my far youth, haunted my nightmares for many a year, and I am sure it
would have kept me from sleep in the conditions, now so perfect, of our
new housing if I had known, about it.
III
The plaza is named, of course, for King Fernando, who took Seville from
the Moors six hundred years ago, and was canonized for his conquests and
his virtues. But I must not enter so rashly upon the history of Seville,
or forget the arrears of personal impression which I have to bring up.
The very drive from the station was full of impressions, from the narrow
and crooked streets, the houses of yellow, blue, and pink stucco, the
flowered and fountained _patios_ glimpsed passingly, the half-lengths of
church-towers, and the fleeting facades of convents and palaces, all
lovely in the mild afternoon light. These impressions soon became
confluent, so that without the constant witness of our note-books I
should now find it impossible to separate them. If they could be
imparted to the reader in their complexity, that would doubtless be the
ideal, though he would not believe that their confused pattern was a
true reflex of Seville; so I recur to the record, which says that the
morning after our arrival we hurried to see the great and beautiful
cathedral.
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