Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

The court is not larger than a great ball-room; it is rectangular in form, with walls no higher than a two-storied Andalusian cottage. A light portico runs all around, supported by very slender white marble columns grouped in symmetrical disorder, two by two and three by three, almost without pedestals, so that they are like the trunks of trees standing on the ground: they have varied capitals, high and graceful, in the form of little pilasters, above which bend little arches of very graceful form, which do not seem to rest upon the columns, but rather to be suspended over them like curtains upholding the columns themselves and resembling ribbons and twining garlands. From the middle of the two shortest sides advance two groups of columns forming two little square temples of nine arches in the form of stalactites, fringes, pendants, and tassels that seem as though they ought to swing and become tangled with the slightest breeze. Large Arabian inscriptions run along the four walls, over the arches, around the capitals, and along the walls of the little temple. In the middle of the court rises a great marble basin supported by twelve lions and surrounded by a paved channel, from which flow four other smaller channels that make a cross between the four sides of the court, cross the portico, enter the adjoining rooms, and join the other water-courses which surround the entire edifice. Behind the two two little temples and in the middle of the other two sides there appear halls and suites of rooms with great open doors, through which one can see the dark background broken by the white columns, gleaming as if they stood at the mouth of a grotto. At every step the forest of columns seems to move and rearrange itself in a new way; behind a column that is apparently single spring up two, three, a row of columns; some fade away, others unite, and still others separate: on looking back from the end of one of the halls everything appears different; the arches on the opposite side seem very far away; the columns appear out of place; the little temples have changed their form; one sees new arches rising beyond the walls, and new columns gleaming here in the sunlight, there in the shadow, yonder scarcely visible by the dim light which sifts through the tracery of the stucco, and the farthest lost in the darkness. There is a constant variety of scene, distance, deceptive effects, mysteries, and playful tricks of the eye, produced by the architecture, the sun, and one's heightened imagination.

"What must this _patio_ have been," said Gongora, "when the inner walls of the portico were resplendent with mosaics, the capitals of the columns flashed with gold, the ceilings and vaults were painted in a thousand colors, the doors hung with silken curtains, the niches full of flowers, and under the little temples and through the halls ran streams of perfumed water, and from the nostrils of the lions spurted twelve jets which fell into the basin, and the air was heavy with the most delicious perfumes of Arabia!"

We remained in the court over an hour, and the time passed like a flash; and I too did what all have done in that place--Spaniards and foreigners alike, men and women, poets and those who are not poets. I ran my hand along the walls, touched all the little columns, clasped them one by one with my two hands like the waist of a child, hid among them, counted them, looked at them from a hundred directions, crossed the court in a hundred ways; tried if it were true that by speaking a word in a deep voice in the mouth of one of the lions you could hear it distinctly from the mouths of all the others; searched along the marbles for the blood-spots of the romantic legends, and wearied my eyes and brain in following the arabesques. There were a number of ladies present. In the Court of the Lions ladies show every sort of childish delight: they look out between two twin columns, hide in the dark corners, sit on the floor, and stand for hours motionless, resting their heads upon their hands, dreaming. These ladies did likewise. There was one dressed in white who, as she passed behind the distant columns, when she thought no one saw her assumed a certain majestic air, like a melancholy sultana, and then laughed with one of her friends: it was enchanting.

"Let us go," said my friend.

"Let us go," I replied, and could not move a step. I was experiencing not only a delightful sense of surprise, but I was trembling with pleasure, and was filled with a longing to touch, to probe, and in some way to see behind those walls and those columns, as if they were made of some secret material and ought to disclose in their inmost part the first cause of the fascination which the place exerts. In all my life I have never thought or said, or shall ever say, so many fond words, so many foolish expressions, so many pretty, happy, senseless things, as I thought and said at that hour.

"But one must come here at sunrise," said Gongora, "one must come at sunset, or at night when the moon is full, to see the miracles of color, light, and shade. It is enough to make one lose one's head."

We went to see the halls. On the eastern side is the Hall of Justice, which is reached by passing under three great arches, each of which corresponds with a door opening into the court. It is a long, narrow hall, with intricate arabesques and precious mosaics, and its vaulted ceiling all points and hollows and clusters of stucco that hang down from the arches and run along the walls, clustered together here and there, drooping, growing one out of the other, crowding and overtopping each other, so that they seem to dispute the space like the bubbles in boiling water, and still presenting in many parts traces of old colors that must have given the ceiling the appearance of a pavilion covered with flowers and hanging fruit. The hall has three little alcoves, in each of which one may see a Moorish painting, to which time and the extreme rarity of works remaining from the brush of Moorish artists have given a very high value. The paintings are on leather, and the leather is fastened to the wall. In the central alcove there are painted on a golden ground ten men, supposed to be ten kings of Granada, clothed in white, with cowls on their heads and scimitars in their hands, sitting on embroidered cushions. The paintings in the other two alcoves represent castles, ladies and cavaliers, hunting scenes, and love episodes whose significance it is difficult to understand. But the faces of the ten kings are marvellously true to the picture one has formed of their race: there is the dark olive complexion, the sensuous lips, the black eyes, with an intense mysterious glance that seems always to be shining in the dark corners of the halls of the Alhambra.

On the north side of the court there is another hall, called the hall _De las dos Hermanas_ (of the two sisters), so called from two great marble slabs which form the pavement. It is the most beautiful hall in the Alhambra--a little square arched room, with one of those ceilings in the form of a cupola which the Spaniards call half oranges, supported by slender columns and arches arranged in a circle, all adorned, like a grotto full of stalactites, with an infinite number of points and hollows, colored and gilded, and so light to the view that it seems as if they are suspended in the air, and would tremble at a touch like a curtain or separate like a cloud or disappear like a cluster of soap-bubbles. The walls, like those of all the other halls, are bedecked with stucco and carved with arabesques incredibly intricate and delicate, forming one of the most marvellous works of human patience and imagination. The more one looks, the more numberless become the lines which blend and cross, and from one figure springs another, and from that a third, and all three produce a fourth that has escaped the eye, and this divides suddenly into ten other figures that have passed unnoticed, and then they mingle again and are again transformed; and one never ceases to discover new combinations, for when the first reappear they are already forgotten, and produce the same effect as at the beginning. One would lose sight and reason in trying to comprehend that labyrinth: it would require an hour to study the outlines of a window, the ornaments of a pilaster, and the arabesques of a frieze; an hour would not be sufficient to fix upon the mind the design of one of the stupendous cedar doors. On either side of the hall there are two little alcoves, and in the centre a little basin with a pipe for a fountain that empties into the channel that crosses the portico and flows to the Fountain of the Lions.

Directly opposite the entrance there is another door, through which one passes into another long, narrow room called the Hall of the Oranges. And from this hall, through a third door, one enters a little chamber called the Cabinet of Lindaraja, very richly ornamented, at the end of which there is a graceful window with two arches overlooking a garden.

To enjoy all the beauty of this magical architecture one must leave the Hall of the Two Sisters, cross the Court of the Lions, and enter a room called the Hall of the Abencerrages, which lies on the southern side, opposite the Hall of the Two Sisters, to which it is very similar in form and ornamentation. From the end of this hall one looks across the Court of the Lions through the Hall of the Two Sisters into the Hall of the Oranges and even into the Cabinet of Lindaraja and the garden beyond, where a mass of verdure appears under the arches of that jewel of a window. The two sides of this window, so diminutive and full of light when seen in the distance from the end of that suite of darkened rooms, look like two great open eyes, that look at you and make you imagine that beyond them must lie the unfathomable mysteries of paradise.

After seeing the Hall of the Abencerrages we went to see the baths, which are situated between the Hall of the Two Sisters and the Court of the Myrtles. We descended a flight of stairs, passed a long narrow corridor, and came out into a splendid hall called the hall _De las Divans_, where the favorites of the king came to rest on their Persian rugs to the sound of the lyre after they had bathed in the adjoining rooms. This hall was reconstructed on the plans of the ancient ruins, and adorned with arabesques, gilded and painted, by Spanish artists after the ancient patterns; consequently one may consider it a room of the Moorish period remaining intact in every part. In the middle is a fountain, and in the opposite walls are two alcoves where the women reposed on divans, and overhead the galleries where the musicians played. The walls are laced, dotted, checkered, and mottled with a thousand brilliant hues, presenting the appearance of a tapestry of Chinese stuff shot with golden threads, with an endless interweaving of figures that must have maddened the most patient mosaic-worker on earth.

Nevertheless, a painter was at work in the hall. He was a German who had worked for three months in copying the walls. Gongora knew him, and asked, "It is wearisome work, is it not?"

And he answered with a smile, "I don't find it so," and bent again over his picture.

I looked at him as if he had been a creature from another world.

We entered the little bathing-chambers, vaulted and lighted from above by some star-and flower-shaped apertures in the wall. The bathing-tubs are very large, single blocks of marble enclosed between two walls. The corridors which lead from one room to the other are low and narrow, so that a man can scarcely pass through them; they are delightfully cool. As I stood looking into one of these little rooms I was suddenly impressed with a sad thought.

"What makes you sad?" asked my friend.

"I was thinking," I replied, "of how we live, summer and winter, in houses like barracks, in rooms on the third floor, which are either dark or else flooded with a torrent of light, without marble, without water, without flowers, without columns; I was thinking that we must live so all our lives and die between those walls without once experiencing the delights of these charmed palaces; I was thinking that even in this wretched earthly life one may enjoy vastly, and that I shall not share this enjoyment at all; I was thinking that I might have been born four centuries ago a king of Granada, and that I was born instead a poor man."

My friend laughed, and, taking my arm between his thumb and finger, as if to give me a pinch, he said, "Don't think of that. Think of how much beauty, grace, and mystery these tubs must have seen; of the little feet that have played in their perfumed waters; of the long hair which has fallen over their rims; of the great languid eyes that have looked at the sky through the openings in the vaulted ceiling, while beneath the arches of the Court of the Lions sounded the hastening step of an impatient caliph, and the hundred fountains of the castle sighed with a quickening murmur, 'Come! come! come!' and in a perfumed hall a trembling slave reverently closed the windows with the rose-colored curtains."

"Ah! leave my soul in peace!" I replied, shrugging my shoulders.

We crossed the garden of the Cabinet of Lindaraja and a mysterious court called the _Patio de la Reja_, and by a long gallery that commands a view of the country reached the top of one of the farthest towers of the Alhambra, called the _Mirador de la Reina_ (the Queen's toilet), shaded by a little pavilion and open all round, hanging over an abyss like an eagle's nest. The view one enjoys from this point--one may say it without fear of contradiction--has not its equal on the face of the earth.

Imagine an immense plain, green as a meadow, covered with young grass, crossed in all directions by endless rows of cypresses, pines, oaks, and poplars, dotted with dense orange-groves that in the distance look no larger than shrubs, and with great orchards and gardens so crowded with fruit trees that they look like green hillocks; and the river Xenil winding through this immense plain, gleaming among the groves and gardens like a great silver ribbon; and all around wooded hills, and beyond the hills lofty rocks of fantastic form, which complete the picture of a barrier-wall with gigantic towers separating that earthly paradise from the world; and there, just beneath one's eyes, the city of Granada, partly extending to the plain and partly on the slope of the hill, all interspersed with groups of trees, shapeless masses of verdure which rise and wave above the roofs of the houses like enormous plumes, until it seems as if they were striving to expand and unite and cover the entire city; and still nearer the deep valley of the Darro more than covered--yes, filled to overflowing and almost heaped full--with its prodigious growth of vegetation, rising like a mountain, and above it there rises yet again a grove of gigantic poplars tossing their topmost boughs so close under the windows of the tower that one can almost touch them; and to the right beyond the Darro, on a high hill towering toward heaven, bold and rounded like a cupola, the palace of the Generalife, encircled by its aërial gardens and almost hidden in a grove of laurels, poplars, and pomegranates; and in the opposite direction a marvellous spectacle, a thing incredible, a vision of a dream--the Sierra Nevada, after the Alps, the highest mountain-range in Europe crowned with snow, white even to a few miles from the gates of Granada, white even to the hills on whose sides spread the pomegranates and palms, and where a vegetation almost tropical expands in all its splendid pomp.

Imagine now over this vast paradise, containing all the smiling graces of the Orient and all the severe beauties of the North, wedding Europe to Africa, and bringing to the nuptials all the choicest marvels of nature, and exhaling to heaven all the perfumes of the earth blended in one breath,--imagine above this happy valley the sky and sun of Andalusia, rolling on to its setting and tinting the peaks with a divine rose-color, and painting the mountain-sides of the Sierra with all the colors of the rainbow, and clothing them with all the reflections of the most limpid azure pearls, its rays breaking in a thousand mists of gold, purple, and gray upon the rocks encircling the plain, and, as it sinks in a flame of fire, casting like a last good-night a luminous crown about the gloomy towers of the Alhambra and the flower-crowned pinnacles of the Generalife, and tell me if this world can give anything more solemn, more glorious, more intoxicating than this love-feast of the earth and sky, before which for nine centuries Granada has trembled with delight and throbbed with pride?

The roof of the _Mirador de la Reina_ is supported by little Moorish columns, between which extend flattened arches which give the pavilion an extremely fanciful and graceful appearance. The walls are frescoed, and one may see along the friezes the initials of Isabella and Philip interwoven with cupids and flowers. Close by the door there still remains a stone of the ancient pavement, all perforated, upon which it is said the sultanas sat to be enveloped in the clouds of perfumed vapor which arose from below.

Everything in this place tells of love and happiness. There one breathes an air as pure as that on a mountain-peak, there one perceives a mingled fragrance of myrtles and roses, and no other sound reaches the ear save the murmur of the Darro as it dashes among the rocks of its stony bed, and the singing of a thousand birds hidden in the dense foliage of the valley; it is truly a nest of loves, a hanging alcove where to go and dream of an aërial balcony to which one might climb and thank God for being happy.

"Ah, Gongora," I exclaimed after contemplating for some moments that enchanting spectacle, "I would give years of my life to be able to summon here, with a stroke of a magic wand, all the dear ones who are looking for me in Italy."

Gongora pointed out a large space on the wall, all black with dates and names of visitors to the Alhambra, written with crayon and charcoal and cut with knives.

"What is this written here?" he demanded.

I approached and uttered a cry: "Chateaubriand!"

"And here?"

"Byron!"

"And here?"

"Victor Hugo!"

After descending from the _Mirador de la Reina_ I thought I had seen the Alhambra, and was so imprudent as to tell my friend so. If he had had a stick in his hand, I verily believe he would have struck me; but, as he had not, he contented himself by regarding me with the air of one demanding whether or not I had lost my senses.

We returned to the Court of the Myrtles and visited the rooms situated on the other side of the Tower of Comares, the greater part in ruins, the rest altered, some absolutely bare, without either pavement or roof, but all worth seeing, both in remembrance of what they had been and for the sake of understanding the plan of the edifice. The ancient mosque was converted into a chapel by Charles V., and a great Moorish hall was changed into an oratory; here and there one still sees the fragments of arabesques and carved ceilings of cedar-wood; the galleries, the courts, and the vestibules remind one of a palace dismantled by fire.

After seeing that part of the Alhambra I really thought there was nothing else left to see, and a second time was imprudent enough to say so to Gongora: this time he could no longer contain himself, and, leading me into a vestibule of the Court of Myrtles and pointing to a map of the building hanging on the wall, he said, "Look, and you will see that all the rooms of the courts and the towers that we have so far visited do not occupy one-twentieth part of the space embraced within the walls of the Alhambra; you will see that we have not yet visited the remains of the three other mosques, the ruins of the House of Cadi, the water-tower, the tower of the Infantas, the tower of the Prisoner, the tower of Candil, the tower of the Picos, the tower of the Daggers, the tower of the _Siete Suelos_, the tower of the Captain, the tower of the Witch, the tower of the Heads, the tower of Arms, the tower of the Hidalgos, the tower of the Cocks, the tower of the Cube, the tower of Homage, the tower of Vela, the Powder Tower, the remains of the House of Mondejar, the military quarters, the iron gate, the inner walls, the cisterns, the promenades; for I would have you know that the Alhambra is not a palace: it is a city, and one could spend his life in studying its arabesques, reading its inscriptions, and every day discovering a new view of the hills and mountains, and going into ecstasies regularly once every twenty-four hours."

And I thought I had seen the Alhambra!

On that day I did not wish to learn anything more, and the dear knows how my head ached when I returned to the hotel. The day after, at the peep of dawn, I was back at the Alhambra, and again in the evening, and I continued to go there every day so long as I remained at Granada, with Gongora, with other friends, with guides, or alone; and the Alhambra always seemed vaster and more beautiful as I wandered through the courts and halls, and passed hour after hour sitting among the columns or gazing out of the windows with an ever-heightening pleasure, every time discovering new beauties, and ever abandoning myself to those vague and delightful fancies among which my mind had strayed on the first day. I cannot tell through which entrances my friends led me into the Alhambra, but I remember that every day on going there I saw walls and towers and deserted streets that I had not seen before, and the Alhambra seemed to me to have changed its site, to have been transformed, and surrounded as if by enchantment with new buildings that changed its original appearance. Who could describe the beauty of those sunset views; those fantastic groves flooded with moonlight; the immense plain and the snow-covered mountains on clear, serene nights; the imposing outlines of those enormous walls, superb towers, and those measureless trees under a starry sky; the prolonged rustling of those vast masses of verdure overflowing the valleys and climbing the hillsides? It was a spectacle before which my companions remained speechless, although they were born in Granada and accustomed from infancy to look upon these scenes. So we would walk along in silence, each buried in his own thoughts, with hearts oppressed by mild melancholy, and sometimes our eyes were wet with tears, and we raised our faces to heaven with a burst of gratitude and love.

On the day of my arrival at Granada, when I entered the hotel at midnight, instead of finding silence and quiet, I found the _patio_ illuminated like a ball-room, people sipping sherbet at the tables, coming and going along the galleries, laughing and talking, and I was obliged to wait an hour before going to sleep. But I passed that hour very pleasantly. While I stood looking at a map of Spain on the wall a great burly fellow, with a face as red as a beet and a great stomach extending nearly to his knees, approached me and, touching his cap, asked if I was an Italian. I replied that I was, and he continued with a smile, "And so am I; I am the proprietor of the hotel."

"I am delighted to hear it, the more so because I see you are making money."

"Great Heavens!" he replied in a tone which he wished to seem melancholy. "Yes, ... I cannot complain; but, ... believe me, my dear sir, however well things may go, when one is far from his native land one always feels a void here;" and he put his hand upon his enormous chest.

I looked at his stomach.

"A great void," repeated mine host; "one never forgets one's country.... From what province are you, sir?"

"From Liguria. And you?"

"From Piedmont. Liguria! Piedmont! Lombardy! They are countries!"

"They are fine countries, there is no doubt of that, but, after all, you cannot complain of Spain. You are living in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and are proprietor of one of the finest hotels in the city; you have a crowd of guests all the year round, and then I see you enjoy enviable health."

"But the void?"

I looked again at his stomach.

"Oh, I see, sir; but you are deceived, you know, if you judge me by appearances. You cannot imagine what a pleasure it is when an Italian comes here. What you will? Weakness it may be.... I know not, ... but I should like to see him every day at table, and I believe that if my wife did not laugh at me I should send him a dozen dishes on my own account, as a foretaste."

"At what hour do you dine to-morrow?"

"At five. But, after all, ... one eats little here, ... hot country, ... everybody lives lightly, ... whatever their nationality may be.... That is the rule.... But you have not seen the other Italian who is here?"

So saying, he turned around, and a man came forward from a corner of the court where he had been watching us. The proprietor, after a few words, left us alone. The stranger was a man of about forty, miserably dressed, who spoke through closed teeth, and kept continually clenching his hands with a convulsive motion as if he was making an effort to keep from using his fists. He told me he was a chorus-singer from Lombardy, and that he had arrived the day before at Granada with other artists booked to sing at the opera for the summer season.

"A beastly country!" he exclaimed without any preamble, looking around as if he wished to make a speech.

"Then you do not remain in Spain voluntarily?" I asked.

"In Spain? I? Excuse me: it is just as if you had asked me whether I was staying voluntarily in a galley."

"But why?"

"Why? But can't you see what sort of people the Spaniards are--ignorant, superstitious, proud, bloodthirsty, impostors, thieves, charlatans, villains?"

And he stood a moment motionless in a questioning attitude, with the veins of his neck so swollen that they seemed ready to burst.

"Pardon me," I replied; "your judgment does not seem favorable enough to admit of my agreeing with you. When it comes to ignorance, excuse me, it will not do for us Italians, for us who still have cities where the schoolmasters are stoned and the professors are stabbed if they give a zero to their scholars,--it will not do for us, I say, to pick flaws in others. As for superstition, alas for us again! since we may still see in that city of Italy in which popular instruction is most widely diffused an unspeakable uproar over a miraculous image of the Madonna found by a poor ignorant woman in the middle of a street! As for crime, I frankly declare that if I were obliged to draw a comparison between the two countries before an audience of Spaniards, with the statistics now in hand, without first proving my data and conclusions, I should be very much alarmed.... I do not wish to say by this that we are not, on the whole, sailing in smoother water than is Spain. I wish to say that an Italian in judging the Spanish, if he would be just, must be indulgent."

"Excuse me: I don't think so. A country without political direction! a country a prey to anarchy! a country--Come, now, cite me one great Spaniard of the present day."

"I cannot, ... there are so few great men anywhere."

"Cite me a Galileo."

"Oh, there are no Galileos."

"Cite me a Ratazzi."

"Well, they have none."

"Cite me ... But, really, they have nothing. And then, does the country seem beautiful to you?"

"Ah! excuse me; that point I will not yield: Andalusia, to cite a single province, is a paradise; Seville, Cadiz, and Granada are splendid cities."

"How? Do you like the houses of Seville and Cadiz, with walls that whiten a poor devil from head to foot whenever he happens to touch them? Do you like those streets along which one can hardly pass after a good dinner? And do you find the Andalusian women beautiful with their devilish eyes? Come, now, you are too indulgent. They are not a _serious_ people. They have summoned Don Amadeus, and now they don't want him. They are not worthy of being governed by a _civilized man_." (These were his actual words.)

"Then you don't find any good in Spain?"

"Not the least."

"But why do you stay?"

"I stay ... because I make my living here."

"Well, that is something."

"But what a living! It is a dog's life! Everybody knows what Spanish cooking is."

"Excuse me: instead of living like a dog in Spain, why not go and live like a man in Italy?"

Here the poor artist seemed somewhat disconcerted, and I, to relieve his annoyance, offered him a cigar, which he took and lighted without a word. And he was not the only Italian in Spain who had spoken to me in those terms of the country and its inhabitants, denying even the clearness of the sky and the grace of the Andalusian women. I do not know what enjoyment there can be in travelling after this fashion, with the heart closed to every kindly sentiment, and continually on the lookout to censure and despise, as if everything good and beautiful which one finds in a foreign country has been stolen from our own, and as if we are of no account unless we run down everybody else. The people who travel in such a mental attitude make me pity rather than condemn them, because they voluntarily deprive themselves of many pleasures and comforts. So it appears to me, at least, to judge others by myself, for wherever I go the first sentiment which the sights and the people inspire in me is a feeling of sympathy; a desire not to find anything which I shall be obliged to censure; an inclination to imagine every beautiful thing more beautiful; to conceal the unpleasant things, to excuse the defects, to be able to say candidly to myself and others that I am content with everything and everybody. And to arrive at this end I do not have to make any effort: everything presents itself almost spontaneously in its most pleasing aspect, and my imagination benignly paints the other aspects a delicate rose-color. I know well that one cannot study a country in this way, nor write sage essays, nor acquire fame as a profound thinker; but I know that one travels with a peaceful mind, and that such travels are of unspeakable benefit.

The next day I went to see the Generalife, which was a sort of villa of the Moorish kings, and whose name is linked to that of the Alhambra as is that of the Alhambra to Granada; but now only a few arches and arabesques remain of the ancient Generalife. It is a small palace, simple and white, with few windows, and an arched gallery surrounded with a terrace, and half hidden in the midst of a grove of laurel and myrtles, standing on the summit of a mountain covered with flowers, rising upon the right bank of the Darro opposite the hill of the Alhambra. In front of the façade of the palace extends a little garden, and other gardens rise one above another almost in the form of a vast staircase to the very top of the mountain, where there extends a very high terrace that encloses the Generalife. The avenues of the gardens and the wide staircases that lead from one to another of the flower-beds are flanked by high espaliers surmounted by arches and divided by arbors of myrtle, curved and intertwined with graceful designs, and at every landing-place rise white summer-houses shaded by trellises and picturesque groups of orange trees and cypresses. Water is still as abundant as in Moorish times, and gives the place a grace, freshness, and luxuriance impossible to describe. From every part one hears the murmur of rivulets and fountains; one turns down an avenue and finds a jet of water; one approaches a window and sees a stream reaching almost to the window-sill; one enters a group of trees and the spray of a little waterfall strikes one's face; one turns and sees water leaping, running, and trickling through the grass and shrubbery.

From the height of the terrace one commands a view of all those gardens as they slope downward in platforms and terraces; one peers down into the abyss of vegetation which separates the two mountains; one overlooks the whole enclosure of the Alhambra, with the cupolas of its little temples, its distant towers, and the paths winding among its ruins; the view extends over the city of Granada with its plain and its hills, and runs with a single glance along all the summits of the Sierra Nevada, that appear so near that one imagines they are not an hour's walk distant. And while you contemplate that spectacle your ear is soothed by the murmur of a hundred fountains and the faint sound of the bells of the city, which comes in waves scarcely audible, bearing with it the mysterious fragrance of this earthly paradise which makes you tremble and grow pale with delight.

Beyond the Generalife, on the summit of a higher mountain, now bleak and bare, there rose in Moorish times other royal palaces, with gardens connected with each other by great avenues lined with myrtle hedges. Now all these marvels of architecture encircled by groves, fountains, and flowers, those fabulous castles in the air, those magnificent and fragrant nests of love and delight, have disappeared, and scarcely a heap of rubbish or a short stretch of wall remains to tell their story to the passer-by. But these ruins, that elsewhere would arouse a feeling of melancholy, do not have such an influence in the presence of that glorious nature whose enchantment not even the most marvellous works of man have ever been able to equal.

On re-entering the city I stopped at one end of the _Carrera del Darro_, in front of a house richly adorned with bas-reliefs representing heraldic shields, armor, cherubs, and lions, with a little balcony, over one corner of which, partly on one wall and partly on another, I read the following mysterious inscription stamped in great letters:

"ESPERANDO LA DEL CIELO,"

which, literally translated, signifies "_Awaiting her in Heaven_." Curious to learn the hidden meaning of those words, I made a note of them, so that I might ask the learned father of my friend about them. He gave me two interpretations, the one almost certainly correct, but not at all romantic; the other romantic, but very doubtful. I give the last: The house belonged to Don Fernando de Zafra, the secretary of the Catholic kings. He had a very beautiful daughter. A young hidalgo, of a family hostile or inferior in rank to the house of Zafra, became enamored of the daughter, and, as his love was returned, he asked for her hand in marriage, but was refused. The refusal of her father stirred the love of the two young hearts to flame: the windows of the house were low; the lover one night succeeded in making the ascent and entered the maiden's room. Whether he upset a chair on entering, or coughed, or uttered a low cry of joy on seeing his beautiful love welcoming him with open arms, the tradition does not tell, and no one knows; but certain it is that Don Fernando de Zafra heard a noise, ran in, saw, and, blind with fury, rushed upon the ill-fated young man to put him to death. But he succeeded in making his escape, and Don Fernando in following him ran into one of his own pages, a partisan of the lovers, who had helped the hidalgo to enter the house: in his haste his master mistook him for the betrayer, and, without hearing his protests and prayers, he had him bound and hanged from the balcony. The tradition runs that while the poor victim kept crying, "Pity! pity!" the outraged father responded as he pointed toward the balcony, "Thou shalt stay there _esperando la del Cielo_!" (awaiting her in heaven)--a reply which he afterward had cut in the stone walls as a perpetual warning to evil-doers.

I devoted the rest of the day to the churches and monasteries.

The cathedral of Granada deserves to be described part by part in an even higher degree than the cathedral of Malaga, although it too is beautiful and magnificent; but I have already described enough churches. Its foundation was laid by the Catholic kings in 1529 upon the ruins of the principal mosque of the city, but it has never been finished. It has a great façade with three doorways, adorned with statues and bas-reliefs, and it consists of five naves, divided by twenty measureless pilasters, each composed of a bundle of slender columns. The chapels contain paintings by Boccanegra, sculptures by Torrigiano, and tombs and other precious ornaments. Admirable above all is the great chapel, supported by twenty Corinthian columns divided into two orders, upon the first of which rise colossal statues of the twelve apostles, and on the second an entablature covered with garlands and heads of cherubs. Overhead runs a circle of magnificent stained-glass windows, which represent the Passion, and from the frieze which crowns them leap ten bold arches forming the vault of the chapel. Within the arches that support the columns are six great paintings by Alonzo Cano, which are said to be his most beautiful and finished work.

And since I have spoken of Alonzo Cano, a native of Granada, one of the strongest Spanish painters of the seventeenth century, although a disciple of the Sevillian school rather than the founder, as some assert, of a school of his own, but less original than his greatest contemporaries,--since I have spoken of him, I wish here to record some traits of his genius and anecdotes of his life little known outside of Spain, although exceedingly remarkable. Alonzo Cano was the most quarrelsome, the most irascible, and the most violent of the Spanish painters. He spent his life in contention. He was a priest. From 1652 to 1658, for six consecutive years, without a day's intermission, he wrangled with the canons of the cathedral of Granada, of which he was steward, because he was not willing to become subdeacon in accordance with the stipulated agreement; before leaving Granada he broke into pieces with his own hands a statue of Saint Anthony of Padua which he had made to the order of an auditor of the chancery, because the man allowed himself to observe that the price demanded seemed a little dear. Chosen master of design to the royal prince, who, as it appears, was not born with a talent for painting, he so exasperated his pupil that the boy was obliged to have recourse to the king that he might be taken out of his hands. Remanded to Granada, to the neighborhood of the chapter of the cathedral, as an especial favor, he bore such a deep rancor from his old litigations with his canons that throughout his life he would not do a stroke of work for them. But this is a small matter. He nursed a blind, bestial, inextinguishable hatred against the Hebrews, and was firmly convinced that in any way to touch a Hebrew or any object that a Hebrew had touched would bring him misfortune. Owing to this conviction he did some of the most extravagant feats in the world. If in walking along the street he ran against a Jew, he would strip off the infected garment and return home in his shirt-sleeves. If by chance he succeeded in discovering that in his absence a servant had admitted a Jew into the house, he discharged the servant, threw away the shoes with which he had touched the pavement profaned by the circumcised, and sometimes even had the pavement torn up and reset. And he found something to find fault with even as he was dying. When he was approaching the end of life the confessor handed him a clumsily-made crucifix that he might kiss it, but he pushed it away with his hand, saying, "Father, give me a naked cross, that I may worship Jesus Christ as He Himself is and as I behold Him in my mind." But, after all, his was a rare, charitable nature which abhorred every vulgar action, and loved with a deep and very pure love the art in which he remains immortal.

On returning to the church after I had made the round of all the chapels and was preparing to leave, I was impressed by a suspicion that there was something else still to be seen. I had not read the Guidebook and had been told nothing, but I heard an inner voice which said to me, "Seek!" and, in fact, I sought with my eyes in every direction, without knowing what I sought. A cicerone noticed me and sidled up to me, as all of his kind do, like an assassin, and asked me with an air of mystery, "_Quiere usted algo?_" (Do you wish something, sir?)

"I should like to know," I replied, "if there is anything to see in this cathedral besides that which I have seen already?"

"How!" exclaimed the cicerone; "you have not seen the royal chapel, have you, sir?"

"What is there in the royal chapel?"

"What is there? Caramba! Nothing less than the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholics."

I could have said so! I had in my mind a place ready for this idea, and the idea was lacking! The Catholic kings must certainly have been buried in Granada, where they fought the last great chivalrous war of the Middle Ages, and where they gave Christopher Columbus a commission to fit out ships which bore him to the New World. I ran rather than walked to the royal chapel, preceded by the limping cicerone; an old sacristan opened the door of the sacristy, and before he allowed me to enter and see the tombs he led me to a sort of glass cupboard full of precious objects, and said to me, "You will remember that Isabella the Catholic, to furnish Christopher Columbus with the money that he needed to supply the ships for the voyage, not knowing where to turn because the coffers of the state were empty, put her jewels in pawn."

"Yes: well?" I demanded impatiently; and, divining the answer, felt my heart beat faster the while.

"Well," replied the sacristan, "that is the box in which the queen locked her jewels to send them to be pawned."

And so saying he opened the cupboard and took out the box and handed it to me.

Oh! brave men may say what they will; as for me, there are things that make me tremble and weep. I have touched the box that contained the treasure by which Columbus was enabled to discover America. Every time I repeat those words my blood is stirred, and I add, "I have touched it with these hands," and I look at my hands.

That cupboard contains also the sword of King Ferdinand, the crown and sceptre of Isabella, a missal and some other ornaments of the king and queen.

We entered the chapel. Between the altar and a great iron chancel that separates it from the remaining space stand two great mausoleums of marble adorned with statuettes and bas-reliefs of great value. Upon one of them lie the statues of Ferdinand and Isabella in their royal robes, with crown, sword, and sceptre; on the other the statues of the other two princes of Spain, and around the statues lions, angels, and arms, and various ornaments, presenting a regal appearance, austere and magnificent.

The sacristan lighted a flambeau, and, pointing out a sort of trap-door in the pavement between the two mausoleums, asked me to open it and descend into the subterranean chamber. With the cicerone's aid I opened the trap-door; the sacristan descended, and I followed him down a narrow little staircase until we reached a little room. There were five caskets of lead, bound with iron bands, each sealed with two initials under a crown. The sacristan lowered the torch, and, touching all five of them, one after another, with his hand, said in a slow, solemn voice,

"Here rests the great queen Isabella the Catholic.

"Here rests the great king Ferdinand V.

"Here rests the king Philip I.

"Here rests Queen Joanna the Mad.

"Here rests Lady Maria, her daughter, who died at the age of nine years.

"God keep them all in his holy peace!"

And, placing the torch on the ground, he crossed his arms and closed his eyes, as if to give me time for meditation.

One would become a hunchback at his desk if he were to describe all the religious monuments of Granada--the stupendous Cartuja; the Monte Sacro, containing the grottoes of the martyrs; the church of San Geronimo, where the great leader Gonzalez di Cordova is buried; the convent of Santo Domingo, founded by Torquemada the Inquisitor; the convent of the Angels, containing paintings by Cano and Murillo and many others; but I suppose that my readers may be even more weary than I am, and will consequently pardon me for passing by a mountain of description which probably would only give them a confused idea of the things described.

But as I have mentioned the sepulchre of the great commander, Gonzalez di Cordova, I cannot forbear translating a curious document in reference to him which was shown me in the church of San Geronimo by a sacristan who was an admirer of the deeds of that hero. The document, in the form of an anecdote, is as follows:

"Every step of the great captain Don Gonzalez di Cordova was an assault, and every assault a victory; his sepulchre in the convent of the Geronomites at Granada was adorned with two hundred banners which he had taken. His envious rivals, and the treasurers of the kingdom of Naples in particular, induced the king in 1506 to demand a statement from Gonzalez of the use he had made of the great sums received from Spain for the conduct of the war in Italy; and, in fact, the king was so small as to consent, and even to be present on the occasion of the conference.

"Gonzalez acceded to the demand with the haughtiest disdain, and proposed to give a severe lesson to the treasurers and the king upon the treatment and consideration to be accorded a conqueror of kingdoms.

"He replied with great indifference and calmness that he would prepare his accounts for the following day, and would let it appear which was the debtor, himself or the exchequer, which demanded an account of one hundred and thirty thousand ducats delivered upon the first payment, eighty thousand crowns upon the second, three millions upon the third, eleven millions upon the fourth, thirteen millions upon the fifth, and so on as the solemn, nasal, foolish secretary who authorized so important an act continued to enumerate the sums.

"The great Gonzalez kept his word, presented himself at the second audience, and, bringing out a voluminous book in which he had noted his justification, he began with the following words in a deep, sonorous voice:

"'Two hundred thousand seven hundred and thirty-six ducats and nine reales to the fathers, the nuns, and the poor, to the end that they might pray God for the triumph of the Spanish arms.

"'One hundred thousand ducats for powder and shot.

"'Ten thousand ducats for perfumed gloves to protect the soldiers from the stench of the corpses of the enemy left on the field of battle.

"'One hundred and seventy thousand ducats for renewing bells worn out by continuous ringing for constant new victories over the enemy.

"'Fifty thousand ducats for brandy for the soldiers on the day of battle.

"'A million and a half ducats for the maintenance of the prisoners and wounded.

"'A million for returning thanks and Te Deums to the Omnipotent.

"'Three hundred millions in masses for the dead.

"'Seven hundred thousand four hundred and ninety-four ducats for spies and ...

"'One hundred millions for the patience which I showed yesterday on hearing that the king demanded an account from the man who has given him his kingdom.'

"These are the celebrated accounts of the great captain, the originals of which are in the possession of Count d'Altimira.

"One of the original accounts, with the autograph seal of the great captain, exists in the Military Museum of London, where it is guarded with great care."

On reading this document I returned to the hotel, making invidious comparisons between Gonzalez di Cordova and the Spanish generals of our times, which, for grave state reasons, as they say in the tragedies, I dare not repeat.

In the hotel I saw something new every day. There were many university students who had come from Malaga and other Andalusian cities to take the examination for the doctor's degree at Granada, whether because they were a little easier there or for what other reason I do not know. We all ate at a round table. One morning at breakfast one of the students, a young man of about twenty, announced that at two o'clock he was to be examined in canon law, and that, not feeling very sure of himself, he had decided to take a glass of wine to refresh the springs of eloquence. He was accustomed to drink only wine weakened with water, and committed the imprudence of emptying at a single draught a glass of the vintage of Xerez. His face changed in an instant in so strange a manner that if I had not seen the transformation with my own eyes I should not have believed that he was the same person.

"There! that is enough!" cried his friends.

But the young man, who already felt that he had become suddenly strong, keen, and confident, cast a compassionate glance at his companions, and with a lordly gesture ordered the waiter to fetch him another glass.

"You will be drunk," they said.

His only response was to drain a second glass.

Then he became wonderfully talkative. There was a score of persons at table: in a few minutes he was conversing with them all, and he revealed a thousand secrets of his past life and his plans for the future. He said that he was from Cadiz, that he had eight thousand francs a year to spend, and that he wished to devote himself to a diplomatic career, because with that revenue, added to something which his uncle would leave him, he should be able to cut a good figure wherever he might be; that he had decided to take a wife at thirty, and to marry a woman as tall as himself, because it was his opinion that the wife should be of the same stature as her husband, to keep either from getting the upper hand of the other; that when he was a boy he was in love with the daughter of an American consul as beautiful as a flower and strong as a pine, but she had a red birth-mark behind one ear, which looked badly, although she knew how to cover it very well with her scarf, and he showed us with his napkin how she covered it; and that Don Amadeus was too ingenuous a man to succeed in governing Spain; that of the poets Zorilla and Espronceda, he had always preferred Espronceda; that it would be folly to cede Cuba to America; that the examination on canon law made him laugh; and that he wished to drink another four fingers of Xerez, the finest wine in Europe.