If the picture postal will not
supply these, or reproduce the many and many relics and memorials which
abound .there and in the sacristy--jewels and vestments and banners and
draperies of the royal camp-altar--there is nothing for the reader but
to go himself and see. It is richly worth his while, and if he cannot
believe in a box which will be shown him as the box Isabel gave Columbus
her jewels in merely because he has been shown a reliquary as her
hand-glass, so much the worse for him. He will not then merit the
company of a small choir-boy who efficiently opens the iron gate to the
crypt and gives the custodian as good as he sends in back-talk and
defiantly pockets the coppers he has earned. Much less will he deserve
to witness the homely scene in an area outside of the Royal Chapel,
where many milch goats are assembled, and when a customer comes,
preferably a little girl with a tin cup, one 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.
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