charm of its own.  A few minutes before the Angelus bell rings, a great company of women gathers beside the river, just below the quay, which is rather a high one.  Not a man would dare to join its ranks.  The moment the Angelus rings, darkness is supposed to have fallen.  As the last stroke sounds, all the women disrobe and step into the water.  Then there is laughing and screaming and a wonderful clatter.  The men on the upper quay watch the bathers, straining their eyes, and seeing very little.  Yet the white uncertain outlines perceptible against the dark-blue waters of the stream stir the poetic mind, and the possessor of a little fancy finds it not difficult to imagine that Diana and her nymphs are bathing below, while he himself runs no risk of ending like Acteon.

I have been told that one day a party of good-for-nothing fellows banded themselves together, and bribed the bell-ringer at the cathedral to ring the Angelus some twenty minutes before the proper hour.  Though it was still broad daylight, the nymphs of the Guadalquivir never hesitated, and putting far more trust in the Angelus bell than in the sun, they proceeded to their bathing toilette—­always of the simplest—­with an easy conscience.  I was not present on that occasion.  In my day, the bell-ringer was incorruptible, the twilight was very dim, and nobody but a cat could have distinguished the difference between the oldest orange woman, and the prettiest shop-girl, in Cordova.

One evening, after it had grown quite dusk, I was leaning over the parapet of the quay, smoking, when a woman came up the steps leading from the river, and sat down near me.  In her hair she wore a great bunch of jasmine—­a flower which, at night, exhales a most intoxicating perfume.  She was dressed simply, almost poorly, in black, as most work-girls are dressed in the evening.  Women of the richer class only wear black in the daytime, at night they dress a la francesa.  When she drew near me, the woman let the mantilla which had covered her head drop on her shoulders, and “by the dim light falling from the stars” I perceived her to be young, short in stature, well-proportioned, and with very large eyes.  I threw my cigar away at once.  She appreciated this mark of courtesy, essentially French, and hastened to inform me that she was very fond of the smell of tobacco, and that she even smoked herself, when she could get very mild papelitos.  I fortunately happened to have some such in my case, and at once offered them to her.  She condescended to take one, and lighted it at a burning string which a child brought us, receiving a copper for its pains.  We mingled our smoke, and talked so long, the fair lady and I, that we ended by being almost alone on the quay.  I thought I might venture, without impropriety, to suggest our going to eat an ice at the neveria.* After a moment of modest demur, she agreed.  But before finally accepting, she desired to know what o’clock it was.  I struck my repeater, and this seemed to astound her greatly.