"Ah! senor," cried Mateo, "I could tell you a story of a
procession once seen among these mountains, but then you'd laugh at
me, and say it was one of the legacies of my grandfather the tailor."
"By no means, Mateo. There is nothing I relish more than a
marvellous tale."
"Well, senor, it is about one of those very men we have been talking
of, who gather snow on the Sierra Nevada.
"You must know, that a great many years since, in my grandfather's
time, there was an old fellow, Tio Nicolo (Uncle Nicholas) by name,
who had filled the panniers of his mule with snow and ice, and was
returning down the mountain. Being very drowsy, he mounted upon the
mule, and soon falling asleep, went with his head nodding and
bobbing about from side to side, while his surefooted old mule stepped
along the edge of precipices, and down steep and broken barrancos,
just as safe and steady as if it had been on plain ground. At
length, Tio Nicolo awoke, and gazed about him, and rubbed his eyes-
and, in good truth, he had reason. The moon shone almost as bright
as day, and he saw the city below him, as plain as your hand, and
shining with its white buildings, like a silver platter in the
moonshine; but, Lord! senor, it was nothing like the city he had
left a few hours before! Instead of the cathedral, with its great dome
and turrets, and the churches with their spires, and the convents with
their pinnacles, all surmounted with the blessed cross, he saw nothing
but Moorish mosques, and minarets, and cupolas, all topped off with
glittering crescents, such as you see on the Barbary flags.
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