In an adjoining classroom Fernando lingered some time to listen to a professor of astrology. This ancient art had always held a certain fascination for him, and he was well aware that the Moors were among its greatest interpreters. The lecturer described at length the influences which the various planets had upon the destinies of man, the manner in which their conjunctions and oppositions affected human affairs, and the characters of persons born under certain astrological conditions. This science too appeared to him incapable of extension or fresh effort, and while hearkening to the speaker he found that though he heard much that his common sense told him was incapable of definite proof, he gleaned nothing of the nature of those planets themselves, their physical movement, or their scientific relation to the earth. In the geography classroom he found that instruction was based upon more modern lines. The works of Arab travellers who had journeyed extensively in Asia and Africa were touched upon. The conditions of life in distant countries of the world were discussed, and as a general rule with much greater exactitude than in the European schools which he had visited, where fact was often subordinated to fancy and where the extraordinary was prized at a much higher rate than the probable. Leaving the university, the court of which was filled to overflowing with scholars who appeared to be disputing on various phases of erudition, Fernando walked to the crowded market-place, a portion of which, he observed, was given over to the sale of manuscripts, and this part, he could not help noticing, was much better patronized than those where food-stuffs and wearing apparel were for sale. In the more open spaces jugglers and mountebanks, usually accompanied by performing animals, went through all sorts of gambols and antics. Here and there small knots of men discussed the more obscure points of the Koran or of Mohammedan law, while others sat in shady corners, lazily drinking sherbet or drowsing away the hot morning hours. In the booths which surrounded the market-place he saw various tradesmen at work--carpenters, smiths, sandal-makers, tailors--but he noticed that the efforts of these were of the most leisurely description, and that their tools were of a type much more antiquated than those in use among the tradesmen of his own country. The hand of time was indeed heavy upon the whole race. In some things it appeared to have made great advances, while in others it seemed to have retained the primitive ideas of the Dark Ages. Its progress seemed to have been made in the realm of thought alone, but even here everything was derivative and had reference to the experiments of an older age. Strangely enough, however, Fernando felt that much of this conservatism touched a responsive chord within his own nature.