[Illustration: _Copyright, 1910, by Underwood & Underwood_
Perhaps later, when the sun scorches the first freshness, Mérida may be a desolate enough spot; we probably knew her best hour, the lovely April of her prime. We were loath to tear ourselves away; we read to our interested audience accounts of their city's past, when Emperors' armies marched along the Roman road that led from Cadiz north, and alert to catch the meaning, they listened with that vividness of the eye that shows the imagination is roused. Then from the daily paper we read to them that in Madrid on Holy Thursday, two days before, the King had washed the feet of a dozen poor men, kissed them in humility, then waited on them at table, assisted by the grandees of Spain; that on Good Friday he had set free some criminals. When the bishop's words rang through the church: "Señor, human laws condemn these men to death," Don Alfonso answered with moved voice: "I pardon them, and may God pardon me!" And somehow, Alfonso XIII is not jarring or theatric among such ancient usages of Spanish Christianity. Very modern with his automobile, his polo, his careless ease, this charming king is one with his people in a radical sympathy with ways that symbolize soul and heart emotions.
Mérida has a bridge built by the Emperor Trajan. And it has ruins of a very stately aqueduct standing in wheat and poppy fields. This is built of stone and brick ranged in regular lines, and though only about a hundred feet high, is truly majestic, the entrancing touch being given by the hundreds of storks who have built nests on the top of the arches. Some of our little friends had accompanied us through the fields to the aqueduct, and when we took a final ramble through the town, many were the smiling greetings, "_Buenas Tardes_." Mérida is too small to have visitors pass a day there without making friends among its courteous people.
We took an evening train on to Cáceres ten miles away, for its hotels sounded inviting; and a second happy day, a holy and tranquil _Domingo de Resurrección_, gave us another memory of Estremadura. Cáceres is an unspoiled mediæval town climbing up a crag, just such a place as Albrecht Dürer loved to paint. It is very individual. From the plaza with its acacia trees we mounted the steep grass-grown streets, past one baronial mansion after another, with old escutcheoned doorways blazoned with plumed helmet and shield. In one of them, the house of the Golfines, _los Reyes Católicos_ stayed on a visit. Nowhere in the world save in Spain could such a bit of the Middle Ages stand untouched and unnoticed, giving one that thrilling sensation of the traveler, the meeting unheralded with a very rare thing. The views caught between the granite mansions were lovely, for Cáceres lies in the most cultivated district of the county. Across the river rose another steep crag, turned into a Way of Calvary, with a picturesque church crowning it.