Outside of the city the people had gone in crowds to a rural fête. Men, women, and children, old and young, rich and poor, on foot, on horse, on mules or donkeys, and in carriages,—any way to go,—all had gone to have a jolly time in the country, as the custom is in Spain. It was a gay sight, but rising among the grounds were scattered here and there the remnants of ancient buildings, broken columns, fragments of capitals, and blocks of stone, that lay there silently speaking of departed glory. For here once stood the fairy palace of the Moorish Abdurhama, which that prince built for his favorite sultana, whose name it bore, and whose statue stood above the principal gate. The whole palace was of marbles and precious stones, adorned with the florid architecture which the genius of the East would invent. More than four thousand marble columns did this luxurious monarch bring from France and Italy and Africa to adorn his halls. And when he had spent more than fifty millions of pounds sterling upon it, he brought into his harem four thousand and three hundred women! Guarded by twelve thousand valiant men, he gave himself up to the pleasures of “the life that now is.” The city of Cordova was the city for such a king! It is Moorish, Oriental, languid, voluptuous, in its decay. Walking along its quiet, almost noiseless streets, we looked in upon the courts that form the central _patio_ around the four sides of which the house is built. In the midst, a fountain springs, and the water falls back into a marble basin. Around it shrubs with blooming flowers fill the air with fragrance and beauty. In some of them evergreen trees, of unknown age, are growing, and these have been trained so curiously, as to produce surprising effects. Planted at the four corners of a square, their tops are brought over to meet each other, the branches are joined, the redundant leaves and twigs being pruned away, they grow together, the whole four, like one tree of arch over arch, a perpetually verdant bower. The windows of the dwelling look down into this court; and in them, or on its marble pavements in the heat of the day, the women sit with their needle-work, enjoying the fragrant shade and the music of the falling water. The gardens abound in oranges, lemons, and limes, hanging over the walls in clusters of extraordinary size.