The worst boy in Tarifa (we did
not identify him) dared not approach for a big-dog or a little, and we
were safe from the boldest blind man, the hardiest hag, however
pockmarked. The lanes and the streets and the plazas were clean as
though our guide had them newly swept for us, and the plaza of the
principal church (no guide-book remembers its name) is perhaps the
cleanest in all Spain.
VI
The church itself we found very clean, and of an interest quite beyond
the promise of the rather bare outside. A painted window above the door
cast a glare of fresh red and blue over the interior, and over the
comfortably matted floor; and there was a quite freshly carved and
gilded chapel which the pleasant youth supplementing our policeman for
the time said was done by artists still living in Tarifa. The edifice
was of a very flamboyant Gothic, with clusters of slender columns and a
vault brilliantly swirled over with decorations of the effect of peacock
feathers. But above all there was on a small side altar a figure of the
Child Jesus dressed in the corduroy suit and felt hat of a Spanish
shepherd, with a silver crook in one hand and leading a toy lamb by a
string in the other.
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