Córdoban streets are not like those of Fez, of the Kasbah of Algiers, of Lisbon. Fez, within its translucent hills and vales, swarms like the entrails of a body. Algiers mounts sinister from the gleaming sea, its streets a blackened coil within the white sepulcher that strikes the sun. Old Lisbon is explosive, gyrant, tragically repressed in its march upward, losing the sky as it comes closer to it. Córdoba is proud. Its pride is intricate as the Talmud; hard and abstruse as the mystic creed of the Sufi; open as a page of Aristotle. This eye that is Córdoba is neither secret nor flinching. And its pride is not willful. Córdoba is unassertive. Its light speaks for it: Seneca the Stoic, Averroës the Commentator, Moses ben Maimun first rationalist of the Jews, Lucan, and Spain’s greatest lyric poet, Luis de Góngora ... such are the light of Córdoba. It is the home of the most perfect Arab Knight, the quiet Al-Mansor who, ruling Spain, decreed Sunday to be a day of rest in deference to the Christians. Córdoba lies within tumultuous mountains and a lazy river. It is a poise of mountains and river. It is a kingly city within chaos; it is masculine in a feminine land. The Christian Copts brought their woman worship to Seville; the gypsies found haven in Granada for their Black Sea spells. Córdoba forbids such fascinations. It is quiet as its river, dense as its mountains, open as its mosque. The streets turn just enough to throw shade to the patios. Ox-teams survive, yet splash no mud on the immaculate walls. Here a miracle of life has overtaken the lunge and death of Islam: here grew a kingdom of balance and of peace. For Córdoba is not the rock of Seneca, not the intellectual play of Averroës and Maimonides, not the deep current underneath of mystical devotion. Córdoba is the balance, and the contemplation, of all its parts. * * * * * The summer night is cool as wisdom; it is a poise against day like that of Seneca the Stoic against the fever of life. When the sun falls behind the roofs, the town opens as northern towns with the dawn. Day indeed is often fiery night on Córdoba. The good folk have gone to bed; houses have been swathed to keep this white night out. Now, houses are opened wide. Air from the world is permitted to come in to the shut courts where geese patter and women seat themselves at looms.