GRANADA.
The journey from Malaga to Granada was the most adventurous and unfortunate that I made in Spain.
In order that my compassionate readers may pity me as much as I desire, they must know (I am ashamed to occupy people with these little details) that at Malaga I had eaten only the lightest sort of an Andalusian repast, of which at the moment of departure I retained a very vague recollection. But I started, feeling sure that I could alight at some railway-station where there would be one of those rooms or public choking-places where one enters at a gallop, eats until one is out of breath, pays as one scampers out to rush into a crowded carriage, suffocated and robbed, to curse the schedule, travel, and the minister of public works who deceives the country. I departed, and for the first hours it was delightful. The country was all gently sloping hills and green fields, dotted with villages crowned with palms and cypresses, and in the carriage, between two old men who rode with their eyes shut, there was a little Andalusian who kept looking around with a roguish smile which seemed to say, "Go on; your lovelorn glances do not offend me." But the train crept along as slowly as a worn-out diligence, and we stopped only a few moments at the stations. By sunset my stomach began to cry for help, and, to render the pangs of hunger even more severe, I was obliged to make a good part of the journey on foot. The train stopped at an unsafe bridge, and all the passengers got out and filed around, two by two, to meet the train on the other side of the river. We were surrounded by the rocks of the Sierra Nevada, in a wild, desert place, which made it seem as if we were a company of hostages led by a band of brigands. When we had clambered into the carriage the train crawled along no faster than before, and my stomach began to complain more desperately than at first. After a long time we arrived at a station all crowded with trains, where a large part of the travellers hurried out before I could reach the step.
"Where are you going?" asked a railroad official, who had seen me alight.
"To dine," I replied.
"But aren't you going to Granada?"
"Yes."
"Then you won't have time; the train starts immediately."
"But the others have gone."
"You will see them come back on the run in a minute."
The freight-trains in front prevented me from seeing the station; I thought it was a great way off, and so stayed where I was. Two minutes passed, five, eight; the tourists did not return and the train did not start. I jumped out, ran to the station, saw a café, and entered a large room. Great heavens! Fifty starving people were standing around a refreshment-table with their noses in their plates, elbows in the air, and their eyes on the clock, devouring and shouting; another fifty were crowding around a counter seizing and pocketing bread, fruit, and candies, while the proprietor and the waiters, panting like horses and streaming with sweat, ran about, tucked up their sleeves, howled, tumbled over the seats and upset the customers, and scattered here and there streams of soup and drops of sauce; and one poor woman, who must have been the mistress of the café, imprisoned in a little niche behind the besieged counter, ran her hands through her hair in desperation. At this sight my arms hung down helplessly. But suddenly I roused myself and made an onslaught. Driven back by a feminine elbow in my chest, I rushed in again; repulsed by a jab in the stomach, I gathered all my strength to make a third attack. At this point the bell rang. There was a burst of imprecations and then a falling of seats, a scattering of plates, a hurry-scurry, and a perfect pandemonium. One man, choking in the fury of his last mouthfuls, became livid and his eyes seemed bursting from his head as though he were being hanged; another in stretching out his hand to seize an orange, struck by some one rushing past, plunged it into a bowl of cream; another was running through the room in search of his valise with a great smear of sauce on his cheeks; another, who had tried to drink his wine at one gulp, had strangled and coughed as if he would tear open his stomach; the officials at the door cried, "Hurry!" and the travellers called back from the room, "Ahogate!" (choked), and the waiters ran after those who had not paid, and those who wanted to pay could not find the waiters; and the ladies swooned, and the children cried, and everything was upside down.
By good fortune I was able to get into my carriage before the train started.
But there a new punishment awaited me. The two old men and the little Andalusian, who must have been the daughter of the one and niece of the other, had been successful in securing a little booty in the midst of that accursed crowd at the counter, and they were eating right and left. I began to watch them with sorrowful eyes like a dog beside his master's table, counting the mouthfuls and the number of times they chewed. The little Andalusian noticed it, and, pointing to something which looked like a croquet, made a gracious bow as if to ask if I would take it.
"Oh no, thank you," I replied with the smile of a dying man; "I have eaten."
My angel, I continued to myself, if you only knew that at this moment I would prefer those two croquets to the bitter apples—as Sir Niccolo Machiavelli would generously say—even those bitter apples from the famous garden of the Hesperides!
"Try a drop of liquor at least," said the old uncle.
I do not know what childish pique against myself or against those good people took possession of me, but it was a feeling which other men experience on similar occasions; however, I replied this time too, "No, thank you; it would be bad for me."
The good old man looked me over from head to foot as if to say that I did not appear like a man to be the worse for a drop of liquor, and the Andalusian smiled, and I blushed for shame.
Night settled down, and the train went on at the pace of Sancho Panza's steed for I knew not how many hours. That night I felt for the first time in my life the pangs of hunger, which I thought I had felt already on the famous day of the twenty-fourth of June, 1866. To relieve these torments I obstinately thought of all the dishes which filled me with repugnance—raw tomatoes, snails in soup, roasted crabs, and snails in salad. Alas! a voice of derision told me, deep down in my vitals, that if I had any of them I should eat them and lick my fingers. Then I began to make imaginary messes of different dishes, as cream and fish, with a dash of wine, with a coat of pepper, and a layer of juniper preserves, to see if I could thus hold my stomach in check. Oh misery! my cowardly stomach did not repel even those. Then I made a final effort and imagined that I was at table in a Parisian hotel at the time of the siege, and that I gently lifted a mouse by the tail out of some pungent sauce, and the mouse, unexpectedly regaining life, bit my thumb and transfixed me with two wicked little eyes, and I, with raised fork, hesitated whether to let it go or to spit it without pity. But, thank Heaven! before I had settled this horrible question, to perform such an act as has never been recorded in the history of any siege, the train stopped and a ray of hope revived my drooping spirits.
We had reached some nameless village, and while I was putting my head out of the window a voice cried, "All out for Granada!" I rushed headlong from the carriage and found myself face to face with a huge bearded fellow, who took my valise, telling me that he was going to put it in the diligence, for from that village to I know not how many miles from imperial Granada there is no railway.
"One moment!" I cried to the unknown man in a supplicating voice: "how long before you start?"
"Two minutes," he replied.
"Is there an inn here?"
"There it is." I flew to the inn, bolted a hard-boiled egg, and rushed back to the diligence, crying, "How much time now?"
"Two minutes more," answered the same voice.
I flew back to the hotel, seized another egg, and ran again to the diligence with the question, "Are you off?"
"In a minute."
Back again to the inn, and a third egg, and then to the diligence: "Are we going?"
"In half a minute."
This time I heaved a mighty sigh, ran to the inn, swallowed a fourth egg and a glass of wine, and rushed toward the diligence. But before I had taken ten steps my breath gave out, and I stopped with the egg halfway down my throat. At this point the whip cracked.—"Wait!" I cried in a hoarse voice, waving my hands like a drowning man.
"Que hay?" (What's the matter?) demanded the driver.
I could not reply.
"He has an egg stuck in his throat," some stranger answered for me.
All the travellers burst into a laugh, the egg went down; I laughed too, overtook the diligence, which had already started, and, regaining my breath, gave my companions an account of my troubles, and they were much interested, and pitied me even more than I had dared to hope after that cruel laugh at my suffocation.
But my troubles were not ended. One of those irresistible attacks of sleepiness which used to come upon me treacherously in the long night-marches among the soldiers seized me all at once, and tormented me as far as the railway-station without my being able to get a moment of sleep. I believe that a cannon-ball suspended by a cord from the roof of the diligence would have given less annoyance to my unfortunate companions than my poor nodding head gave as it bobbed on all sides as if it was attached to my neck by a single tendon. On one side of me sat a nun, on the other a boy, and opposite a peasant-woman, and throughout the entire journey I did nothing but strike my head against these three victims with the monotonous motion of a bell-clapper. The nun, poor creature! endured the strokes in silence, perhaps in expiation for her sins of thought; but the boy and peasant-woman muttered from time to time, "He is a barbarian!"—"This must stop!"—"His head is like lead!" Finally, a witticism from one of the passengers released all four of us from this suffering. The peasant-woman was lamenting a little louder than usual, and a voice from the end of the diligence exclaimed, "Be consoled; if your head is not yet broken, you may be sure it will not be, for it must certainly be proof against the hammer." They all laughed; I awakened, excused myself, and the three victims were so happy to find themselves released from that cruel thumping that, instead of taking revenge with bitter words, they said, "Poor fellow! you have slept badly. How you must have hurt your head!"
We finally arrived at the railway, and behold what a perverse fate! Although I was alone in the railway-carriage, where I might have slept like a nabob, I could not close my eyes. A pang went through my heart at the thought of having made the journey by night when I could not see anything nor enjoy the distant view of Granada. And I remembered the lovely verses of Martinez de la Rosa:
"O my dear fatherland! At last I see thee again! I see thy fair soil, thy joyful teeming fields, thy glorious sun, thy serene sky!
"Yes! I see the fabled Granada stretching along the plain from hill to hill, her towers rising among her gardens of eternal green, the crystal streams kissing her walls, the noble mountains enclosing her valleys, and the Sierra Nevada crowning the distant horizon.
"Oh, thy memory haunted me wherever I went, Granada! It destroyed my pleasures, my peace, and my glory, and oppressed my heart and soul! By the icy banks of the Seine and the Thames I remembered with a sigh the happy waters of the Darro and the Genil, and many times, as I carolled a gay ballad, my bitter grief overcame me, and weeping, not to be repressed, choked my voice.
"In vain the delightful Arno displayed her flower-strewn banks, sweet seats of love and peace! 'The plain watered by the gentle Genil,' said I, 'is more flowery, the life of the lovely Granada is more dear.' And I murmured these words as one disconsolate, and, remembering the house of my fathers, I raised my sad eyes to heaven.
"What is thy magic, what thy unspeakable spell, O fatherland! O sweet name! that thou art so dear? The swarthy African, far from his native desert, looks with sad disdain on fields of green; the rude Laplander, stolen from his mother-earth, sighs for perpetual night and snow; and I—I, to whom a kindly fate granted birth and nurture in thy bosom blest by so many gifts of God—though far from thee, could I forget thee, Granada?"
When I reached Granada it was quite dark, and I could not see so much as the outlines of a house. A diligence drawn by two horses,
landed me at a hotel, where I was kept waiting an hour while my bed was being made, and finally, just before three o'clock in the morning, I was at last able to lay my head on the pillow. But my troubles were not over: just as I was falling into a doze I heard an indistinct murmur in the next room, and then a masculine voice which said distinctly, "Oh, what a little foot!" You who have bowels of compassion, pity me. The pillow was torn a little; I pulled out two tufts of wool, stuffed them in my ears; and, rehearsing in thought the misfortunes of my journey, I slept the sleep of the just.
In the morning I went out betimes and walked about through the streets of Granada until it was a decent hour to go and drag from his home a young gentleman of Granada whom I had met at Madrid at the house of Fernandez Guerra, Gongora by name, the son of a distinguished archeologist and a descendant of the famous Cordovan poet Luigi Gongora, of whom I spoke in passing. That part of the city which I saw in those few hours did not fulfil my expectation. I had expected to find narrow mysterious streets and white cottages like those of Cordova and Seville, but I found instead spacious squares and some handsome straight streets, and others tortuous and narrow enough, it is true, but flanked by high houses, for the most part painted in false bas-reliefs with cupids and garlands and flourishes and draperies, and hangings of a thousand colors, without the Oriental appearance of the other Andalusian cities.
The lowest part of Granada is almost all laid out with the regularity of a modern city. As I passed along those streets I was filled with contempt, and should certainly have carried a gloomy face to Señor Gongora if by chance as I walked at random I had not come out into the famous Alameda, which enjoys the reputation of being the most beautiful promenade in the world, and it repaid me a thousand times for the detestable regularity of the streets which lead to it.
Imagine a long avenue of unusual width, along which fifty carriages might pass abreast, flanked by other smaller avenues, along which run rows of measureless trees, which at a noble height form an immense green arch, so dense that not a sunbeam can penetrate it, and at the two ends of the central avenue two monumental fountains throwing up the water in two great streams which fall again in the finest vaporous spray, and between the many avenues crystal streams, and in the middle a garden all roses and myrtle and jessamine and delicate fountains; and on one side the river Genil, which flows between banks covered with laurel-groves, and in the distance the snowclad mountains, upon whose sides distant palms raise their fantastic fronds; and everywhere a brilliant green, dense and luxuriant, through which one sees here and there an enchanting strip of azure sky.
As I turned off of the Alameda I met a great number of peasants going out of the city, two by two and in groups, with their wives and children, singing and jesting. Their dress did not seem to me different from that of the peasants in the neighborhood of Cordova and Seville. They wore velvet hats, some with very broad brims, others with high brims curved back; a little jacket made with bands of many-colored cloth; a scarf of red or blue; closely-fitting trousers buttoned along the hip; and a pair of leathern gaiters open at the side, so as to show the leg. The women were dressed like those in the other provinces, and even in their faces there was no noticeable difference.
I reached my friend's house and found him buried in his archæological studies, sitting in front of a heap of old medals and historic stones. He received me with delight, with a charming Andalusian courtesy, and, after exchanging the first greetings, we both pronounced with one voice that magic word that in every part of the world stirs a tumult of great recollections in every heart and arouses a sense of secret longing; that gives a final spur toward Spain to one who has the desire to travel thither and has not yet finally resolved to start; that name at which hearts of poets and painters beat faster and the eyes of women flash—"The Alhambra!"
We rushed out of the house.
The Alhambra is situated upon a high hill which overlooks the city, and from a distance presents the appearance of a fortress, like almost all Oriental palaces. But when, with Gongora, I climbed the street of Los Gomeles on our way toward the famous edifice, I had not yet seen the least trace of a distant wall, and I did not know in what part of the city we should find it. The street of Los Gomeles slopes upward and describes a slight curve, so that for a good way one sees only houses ahead, and supposes the Alhambra to be far away. Gongora did not speak, but I read in his face that in his heart he was greatly enjoying the thought of the surprise and delight that I should experience. He looked at the ground with a smile, answering all my questions with a sign which seemed to say, "Wait a minute!" and now and then raised his eyes almost furtively to measure the remaining distance. And I so enjoyed his pleasure that I could have thrown my arms around his neck in gratitude.
We arrived before a great gate that closed the street. "Here we are!" said Gongora. I entered.
I found myself in a great grove of enormously high trees, leaning one toward another, on this side and on that, along a great avenue which climbs the hill and is lost in the shade: so close are the trees that a man could scarcely pass among them, and wherever one looks one sees only their trunks, which close the way like a continuous wall. The branches meet above the avenues; not a sunbeam penetrates the wood; the shade is very dense; on every side glide murmuring streams, and the birds sing, and one feels a vernal freshness in the air.
"We are now in the Alhambra," said Gongora: "turn around, and you will see the towers and the embattled barrier-wall."
"But where is the palace?" I demanded.
"That is a mystery," he answered; "let us go forward at random."
We climbed an avenue running along beside the great central avenue that winds up toward the summit. The trees form overhead a green pavilion through which not a particle of sky is visible, and the grass, the shrubbery, and the flowers make on either side a lovely border, bright and fragrant, sloping slightly toward each other, as if they are trying to unite, mutually attracted by the beauty of their colors and the fragrance of their perfume.
"Let us rest a moment," I said: "I want to take a great breath of this air; it seems to contain some secret germs that if infused into the blood must prolong one's life; it is air redolent of youth and health."
"Behold the door!" exclaimed Gongora.
I turned as if I had been struck in the back, and saw a few steps ahead a great square tower, of a deep-red color, crowned with battlements, with an arched door, above which one sees a key and a hand cut in the stone.
I questioned my guide, and he told me that this was the principal entrance of the Alhambra, and that it was called the Gate of Justice, because the Moorish kings used to pronounce sentence beneath that arch. The key signifies that this door is the key to the fortress, and the hand symbolizes the five cardinal virtues of Islam—Prayer, Fasting, Beneficence, Holy War, and the Pilgrimage to Mecca. The Arabian inscription attests that the edifice was erected four centuries ago by the Sultan Abul Hagag Yusuf, and another inscription, which one sees everywhere on the columns, says, "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet! and there is no power, no strength, apart from Allah!"
We passed under the arch and continued the ascent along an enclosed street until we found ourselves at the top of the hill, in the middle of an esplanade surrounded by a parapet and dotted with shrubs and flowers. I turned at once toward the valley to enjoy the view, but Gongora seized me by the arm and made me look in the opposite direction. I was standing in front of the great palace of the Renaissance, partly in ruins and flanked by some wretched little houses.
"Is this a joke?" I demanded. "Have you brought me here to see a Moorish castle, for me to find the way closed by a modern palace? Whose abominable idea was it to run up this building in the gardens of the caliphs?"
"Charles V.'s."
"He was a vandal. I have not yet forgiven him for the Gothic church he planted in the middle of the mosque of Cordova, and now these barracks fill me with utter loathing of his crown and his glory. But, in the name of Heaven, where is the Alhambra?"
"There it is."
"Where?"
"Among those huts."
"Oh, fudge!"
"I pledge you my word of honor."
I folded my arms and looked at him, and he laughed."
"Well, then," I exclaimed, "this great name of the Alhambra is only another of those usual false exaggerations of the poets. I, Europe, and the world have been shamefully deceived. Was it worth while to dream of the Alhambra for three hundred and sixty-five nights in succession, and then to come to see a group of ruins with some broken columns and smoky inscriptions?"
"How I enjoy this!" answered Gongora with a peal of laughter. "Cheer up now; come and be persuaded that the world has not been deceived: let us enter this rubbish-pile."
We entered by a little door, crossed a corridor, and found ourselves in a court. With a sudden cry I seized Gongora's hand, and he asked with a tone of triumph,
"Are you persuaded?"
I did not answer, I did not see him: I was already far away; the Alhambra had already begun to exercise upon me that mysterious and powerful fascination which no one can avoid nor any one express.
We were in the Patio de los Arrayanes, the Court of the Myrtles, which is the largest in the edifice, and presents at once the appearance of a room, a courtyard, and a garden. A great rectangular basin full of water, surrounded by a myrtle hedge, extends from one side of the patio to the other, and like a mirror reflects the arches, arabesques, and the mural inscriptions.
To the right of the entrance there extend two orders of Moorish arches, one above the other, supported by slender columns, and on the opposite side of the court rises a tower with a door through which one sees the inner rooms in semi-darkness and the mullioned windows, and through the windows the blue sky and the summits of the distant mountains. The walls are ornamented to a certain height from the pavement with brilliant mosaics, and above the mosaics with arabesques of very intricate design that seem to tremble and change at every step, and here and there among the arabesques and along the arches they stretch and creep and intertwine, like garlands, Moorish inscriptions containing greetings, proverbs, and legends.
Beside the door of entrance is written in Cufic characters: Eternal Happiness!—Blessing!—Prosperity!—Felicity!—Praised be God for the blessing of Islam!
In another place it is written: I seek my refuge in the Lord of the Morning.
In another place: O God! to thee belong eternal thanksgiving and undying praise.
Elsewhere there are verses from the Koran and entire poems in praise of the caliphs.
We stood some minutes in silent admiration; not the buzz of a fly was heard; now and then Gongora started toward the tower, but I clutched him by the arm and felt that he was trembling with impatience.
"But we must make haste," said he, finally, "or else we shall not get back to Granada before evening."
"What do I know of Granada?" I answered; "what do I know of morning or evening or of myself? I am in the Orient!"
"But this is only the antechamber of the Alhambra, my dear Arabian," said Gongora, urging me forward. "Come, come with me where it will really seem like being in the Orient."
And he led me, reluctant though I was, to the very threshold of the tower-door. There I turned to look once more at the Court of Myrtles and gave a cry of surprise. Between two slender columns of the arched gallery which faces the tower, on the opposite side of the courtyard, stood a girl, a beautiful dark Andalusian face, with a white mantle wound around her head and falling over her shoulder: she stood leaning upon the railing in a languid attitude, with her eyes fixed upon us. I cannot tell the fantastic effect produced by that figure at that moment—the grace imparted by the arch which curved above the girl's head and the two columns which formed a frame around her, and the beautiful harmony which she gave to the whole court, as if she were an ornament necessary to its architecture conceived in the mind of the architect at the moment he imagined the whole design. She seemed like a sultana awaiting her lord, thinking of another sky and another love. She continued looking at us, and my heart began to beat faster. I questioned my friend with my eyes, as if to be assured that I was not deceived. Suddenly the sultana laughed, dropped her white mantle, and disappeared.
"She is a servant," said Gongora.
Still I remained in the mist.
She was, in fact, a servant of the custodian of the Alhambra who was in the habit of practising that joke upon strangers.
We entered the tower called the Tower of Comares, or, vulgarly, the Tower of the Ambassadors. The interior forms two halls, the first of which is called the Hall of the Barca, and takes its name either from the fact that it is shaped like a boat or because it was called by the Moors the Hall of Baraka, or Blessing, a word which might have been contracted by the people into barca (a boat.) This hall hardly seems the work of human hands: it is all a vast network of tracery in the form of garlands, rosettes, boughs of trees, and leaves, covering the vaulted ceiling, the arches, and the walls in every part and in every way—closely twining, checkered, climbing higher and higher, and yet marvellously distinct and combined in such a manner that the parts are presented to the eye altogether at a single glance, affording a spectacle of dazzling magnificence and enchanting grace. I approached one of the walls, fixed my eyes upon the extreme point of an arabesque, and tried to follow its windings and turnings: it was impossible; my eye was lost, my mind confused, and all the arabesques from pavement to ceiling seemed to be moving and blending, as if to conceal the thread of their inextricable network. You may make an effort not to look around, to centre your whole attention upon a single spot of the wall, to scan it closely and follow the thread with your finger: it is futile; in a moment the tracery is a tangled skein, a veil steals between you and the wall, and your arm falls. The wall seems woven like a web, wrought like brocade, netted like lace, and veined like a leaf; one cannot look at it closely nor fix its design in one's mind: it would be like trying to count the ants in an anthill: one must be content to look at the walls with a wandering glance, then to rest and look again later, and then to think of something else and talk. After I had looked around a little with the air of a man overcome with vertigo rather than admiration, I turned toward Gongora, so that he might read in my face what I would have spoken.
"Let us enter the other pile of ruins," he answered with a smile as he drew me into the great Hall of the Ambassadors, which fills all the interior of the tower, for, really, the Hall of the Barca belongs to a little building which does not form a part of the tower, although it is joined to it. The tower is square in form, spacious, and lighted with nine great arched windows in the form of doors, which present almost the appearance of so many alcoves, so great is the thickness of the wall; each one is divided down the middle toward the outside by a little marble column that supports two beautiful arches surmounted in their turn by two little arched windows. The walls are covered with mosaics and arabesques indescribably delicate and multiform, and with innumerable inscriptions extending like wide embroidered ribbons over the arches of the windows, up the massive cornices, along the friezes, and around the niches where once stood vases full of flowers and perfumed water. The ceiling, which rises to a great height, is inlaid with cedar-wood, white, gold, and azure, joined together in circles, stars, and crowns, and forming many little arches, cells, and vaulted windows, through which falls a wavering light, and from the cornice which joins the ceiling to the walls hang tablets of stucco-work cut in facets chiselled and moulded like stalactites and bunches of flowers. The throne stood at the central window on the side opposite the door of entrance. From the windows on that side one enjoys a stupendous view of the valley of the Darro, deep and silent, as if it too felt the fascination of the Alhambra's grandeur; from the windows on the other two sides one sees the boundary-wall and the towers of the fortress; and through the entrance the light arches of the Court of the Myrtles in the distance and the water of the basin, which reflects the blue of the sky.
"Well!" Gongora demanded; "was it worth dreaming of the Alhambra for three hundred and sixty-five nights?"
"There is a strange thought passing through my brain at this moment," I replied. "That court as it looks from here, that hall, those windows, those colors, everything that surrounds me, seems familiar; it seems to correspond with a picture which I have carried in my head I know not how long and I know not in what manner, confused with a thousand other things, perhaps born of a dream—how should I know? When I was sixteen years old I was a lover, and the young girl and I alone in a garden in the shade of a summer-house, as we gazed in each other's eyes, uttered unconsciously a cry of joy that stirred our blood as if it had come from the mouth of a third person who had discovered our secret. Well, since that time I have often longed to be a king and to have a palace; but in giving form to that desire my imagination did not rest merely in the grand gilded palaces of our country; it flew to distant lands, and there on the summit of a lofty mountain reared a castle of its own in which everything was small and graceful and illumined by a mysterious light; and there were long suites of rooms adorned with a thousand fanciful and delicate ornaments, with windows through which we two alone might look, and little columns behind which my little one might almost hide her face playfully as she listened to my step approaching from hall to hall, or heard my voice mingled with the murmur of the fountains in the garden. All unconsciously, in building that castle in fantasy, I was building the Alhambra; in those moments I imagined something like these halls, these windows, and this court that we see before us—so similar, indeed, that the more I look around the better I remember and seem to recognize the place just as I have seen it a thousand times. All lovers dream a little of the Alhambra, and if they were able to reproduce all their dreams in line and color, they would make pictures that would amaze us by their likeness to all one sees here. This architecture does not express power, glory, and grandeur; it expresses love and passion—love with its mysteries, its caprices, its fervor, its bursts of God-given gratitude; passion with its melancholy and its silences. There is, then, a close connection, a harmony, between the beauty of this Alhambra and the souls of those who have loved at sixteen, when longings are but dreams and visions. And hence arises the indescribable fascination exercised by this beauty, and hence the Alhambra, although deserted and ruined as it is, is still the most enchanting castle in the world, and to the end of time visitors will leave it with a tear. For in parting with the Alhambra we bid a last adieu to the most beautiful dreams of youth revived among these walls for the last time. We bid adieu to faces unspeakably dear that have broken the oblivion of many years to stand beside us a last time by the little columns of these windows. We bid adieu to all the fancies of youth. We bid adieu to that love which will never live again."
"It is true," answered my friend, "but what will you say when you have seen the Court of the Lions? Come, let us hurry."
We left the tower with hasty steps, crossed the Court of Myrtles, and came to a little door opposite the door of entrance.
"Stop!" cried Gongora.
I stopped.
"Do me a favor?"
"A hundred."
"Only one: shut your eyes and don't open them until I tell you."
"Well, they are shut."
"See that you keep them so; I sha'n't like it if you open them."
"Never fear."
Gongora took me by the hand and led me forward: I trembled like a leaf.
We took about fifteen steps and stopped.
"Look!" said Gongora in an agitated voice.
I looked, and I swear by the head of my reader I felt two tears trickling down my cheeks.
We were in the Court of the Lions.
If at that moment I had been obliged to go out as I had come in, I could not have told what I had seen. A forest of columns, a vision of arches and tracery, an indefinable elegance, an unimaginable delicacy, prodigious wealth; an irrepressible sense of airiness, transparency, and wavy motion like a great pavilion of lace; an appearance as of an edifice which must dissolve at a breath; a variety of lights and mysterious shadows; a confusion, a capricious disorder, of little things; the grandeur of a castle, the gayety of a summer-house; an harmonious grace, an extravagance, a delight; the fancy of an enamored girl, the dream of an angel; a madness, a nameless something,—such is the first effect of the Court of the Lions.
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.