New buildings are superseding the old in Antequeruela, and poverty and squalor pushed further out of the sight of El Caballero, his Highness the tourist. Æsthetically we appreciate the picturesque side of poverty, the tumble-down houses, the rags, the graceful attitudes of the patient poor for ever shifting in the patches of sunlight as the great life-giver moves round. Dinner will be ready for us at 7 o'clock in the hotel, there would be no call to leave home if every town we came to was clean and its people prosperous. "But what about _Los Pobres_, the beggars?" you ask. "Are they really deserving of charity, or only lazy scoundrels?" I cannot answer you. I can only tell you that I have never seen such terrible emaciated bundles of rags as those I saw in Granada. In Seville, though it is forbidden to beg, it was the one-eyed that predominated; in Cordova he of no legs, who having marked down his prey, displayed great agility as he scuttled across the street with the help of little wooden hand-rests; but here not only were both combined, but various horrors of crippled and disfigured humanity with open sores and loathsome disease thrust themselves before me wherever I went. It was disgusting--but oh! how picturesque! If only, my good _Pobres_, you would not come so close to me! They say Spain is the one unspoilt country in Europe. Personally I think she is the one country that wants regenerating. Her girls are women at sixteen, old at thirty, and aged ten years later. Her men take life as it comes with very little initiative to better themselves. Very few display any energy. Their chief thoughts are woman, and how to pass the day at ease. Luckily for the country, at the age when good food and clean living helps to make men, her youth is invigorated by army service. True it is not popular. In the late war they died like flies through fever and ill-feeding, and many were the sad tales I heard of José and Pedro returning from the front with health ruined for life. It was a sad blow to Spain, that war. Her navy demolished and her colonies lost. It may be the regeneration of the nation, her well-wishers hope so, but it is a difficult thing to change the leopard's spots. The beggar being hungry begs, and well-nigh starves, his children follow his example and probably his great grandchildren will be in the same line of business a hundred years hence--_Quien sabe?_ who knows?