Segovia merits a prolonged stay. There were two Englishwomen in our hotel, who had passed months painting in the unfrequented city and found it a treasure house for the artist. It is full of Romanesque churches of the 11th and 12th centuries; so many are there that some are unused and falling into decay. The two best are San Martín and San Millán; the first, in the center of the town, surrounded by noticeable houses, has outside cloisters, that serve as a sunny lounging place for the people. From San Martín you can descend to San Millán by the steps beside the Plaza Isabel II. Apart from the church itself, with colossal animals carved on its capitols, the view from its porch is a most beautiful one, including the aqueduct, the Cathedral, and climbing houses, part of whose foundations it is plain to see are the apses of ancient churches.
Segovia's Cathedral is not Romanesque like most of her churches, but late-Gothic, designed by the same architect who did Salamanca's new Cathedral, and like it, though a poor thing exteriorly, the inside is dignified and effective: it is more fortunate than its sister church in having a curved east end, not Salamanca's cold hall-like apse. The cloisters of Segovia belonged to the earlier Cathedral; they were taken down and skillfully reset here; the pillars being elliptical in shape like Oviedo, are not thoroughly pleasing. In a chapel opening out of the cloisters is the touching, small tomb of the prince whose nurse dropped him by accident from a window of the Alcázar, back in the 14th century; and a good example of the countless rare tombs of Spain is the bishop, with an exquisite ascetic face of chiseled marble, who lies in the passage leading to the cloisters.
As we were in Segovia on All Saints' Day, we went to the celebration in the Cathedral, saw the prelate--the train of his red robe held by bearers--met at the church door by the canons and conducted in state to his throne. The vergers were very gorgeous; the leader carried a silver staff and wore a white wig and a white robe, his two assistants also in white wigs but with red velvet robes. The following day, All Souls', these vergers were dressed in mourning, and in the center of the black-draped church was placed, with true Spanish realism, a covered bier. On All Saints' Day there was really good music on the organ whose pipes flared out over aisles and choir; also an excellent sermon to which all listened in rapt attention, officers, peasants, and grave faced hidalgos standing in a characteristic group around the pulpit. The best way to learn Spanish and to learn more than the lip language of this race, is to listen to the sermons. Their eloquence is natural and contagious, and the peroration, delivered with _brio_, is often an artistic treat. Attend the sermons and frequent the early morning services, and you stumble on scenes of unobtrusive piety that tell you, despite some Spanish pessimists, that the soul of religion still lives in this land of the latest crusaders. As Sunday was the day we had set for the trip to La Granja, I went early to the Cathedral, and at Mass in a dark chapel of the apse, I watched long two gallant little lads of twelve and fourteen, smart in their artillery uniforms, swords, and white gloves. They went to Communion with their mother, who, like most Spanish women in church, was dressed in black with a draped veil, a fashion that lends an air of distinction to the plainest. This group of three remained to pray after the others had left the chapel, remained as a pleasure really to pray, the serious, high-browed, little faces bent over their books of devotion as they read the After-Communion devotions by the light of a tall candle placed on the floor beside them; then their blue eyes closed in such sweet, unconscious piety that it touched the heart strangely. And when, their prayers over, they left the Cathedral, each seized the mother's arm with a gay scamper of delight--she probably on a visit to them--and now for a whole day of vacation and enjoyment!