"Tom Price--bah! You should go to Astley's, in the Westminster Bridge Road, my boy. That fairly takes the cake. I'm off!" He went, and I was not sorry; but the spell was broken. I was guest of an inn. My elysian train of reverie had been smashed up; the genius of dry-goods had evicted poetry under circumstances of aggravated harshness; before the stamp of the elastic-sided boot of Manchester, Pedro the Cruel and Alonso the Wise, Murillo and Luca Giordano, Maria de Padilla and Leonora de Guzman, "el Rey Chiquito" Boabdil and the heir of Columbus--all had melted into thinnest of air. Inexorable duty called me elsewhere before the Holy Week solemnities, so that I have no opportunity of describing them _de proprio visu_, and I do not care to rehearse twice-told tales. But whilst I was in Seville I wandered to and fro and made good use of my leisure, hearing and seeing as much as most visitors. Of those things which remain imprinted on my memory I may repeat some without incurring--at least so I trust--the imputation of boring the reader. There was a basin in the gardens of the Alcázar, where I was wont to sit beneath the shade of the foliage in the strong heats of noon. There is an anecdote concerning it which impressed me mightily. King Ferdinand was here one day, and was sore perplexed by an affair of state. He required a just and astute judge to decide some vexed question of the first importance. Walking up and down he unconsciously picked an orange, cut it in twain, and flung one half into the water, the cut side downwards. Suddenly an idea struck him. The monarch sent for a judge, and asked what was that floating before him. "An orange," was the answer. Irritated, he dismissed him, summoned another, put the same question, and received the same reply. This went on until at length one authority, before answering, drew the fruit towards him with the branch of a tree, picked it out of the water, and gave the true reply: "Half an orange!" There is a sound moral at the core of this orange. There are five-and-twenty parish churches in Seville and two thousand priests; but, as too often happens on the Continent, the women were vastly more attentive than the men to observances of devotion. I made the acquaintance of a wealthy burgess, a dealer in curiosities, who asked me round to his shop to inspect some of the charming peasant costumes of Murcia, now fast falling into disuse--and a grievous pity it is. It was Friday when I visited him, and he was gobbling pork-chops. "What! you a Christian, you a son of the Church!" I exclaimed. "Ah! señor," he apologized; "forgive me! I am very frail, but my wife is _so_ good a Christian. I reverence that woman. She has gone to Mass without breaking her fast, and when she returns she will only take one small cup of chocolate."