Our attendant priest told us, with an
earnest credulity that was very touching, the story of Maria del Salto,
Mary of the Leap, whose history was staring at us from the wall. She was
a Jewish lady, whose husband had doubts of her discretion, and so threw
her from a local Tarpeian rock. As she fell she invoked the Virgin, and
came down easily, sustained, as you see in the picture, by her faith and
her petticoats.
As we parted from the good fathers and entered our carriages at the door
of the church, the swarm of mendicants had become an army. The word had
doubtless gone through the city of the outlandish men who had gone into
the Cathedral with whole coats, and the result was a _levee en masse_ of
the needy. Every coin that was thrown to them but increased the clamor,
as it confirmed them in their idea of the boundless wealth and
munificence of the givers. We recalled the profound thought of Emerson,
"If the rich were only as rich as the poor think them!"
At last we drove desperately away through the ragged and screaming
throng. We passed by the former home of the Jeronomite monks of the
Parral, which was once called an earthly paradise, and in later years
has been a pen for swine; past crumbling convents and ruined churches;
past the charming Romanesque San Millan, girdled with its round-arched
cloisters; the granite palace of his Reverence the Bishop of Segovia,
and the elegant tower of St.
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