to which injurious terms all mules appear, in general, particularly
sensitive, either because the said terms are always accompanied
by a blow on the back with the handle of the whip, or because
they really are in themselves very offensive. By the aid of these
epithets, aptly applied several times, we arrived at the gates of
Madrid at about five in the evening.

We were already acquainted with Madrid, and saw nothing new in it,
with the exception of the procession of the Corpus Christi: this
ceremony has, however, lost much of its former splendour, by the
suppression of the convents and religious fraternities; though
it still retains an appearance of great solemnity. The streets
through which the procession passes are strewed with fine sand,
while canvass _tendidos_, which reach from house to house, afford
protection from the sun and keep the air cool: the balconies are
decorated with flags and crowded with pretty women in full dress;
so that, altogether, the sight is one of the most charming that
can well be imagined. The perpetual motion of the fans, which
open and shut, tremble and flutter, like the wings of a butterfly
about to settle down somewhere; the movements of the elbows of
the women, wrapping themselves in their mantles and smoothing
an ungraceful wrinkle in their dress; the glances sent from one
window to acquaintances at another; the pretty inclination of
the head, and the graceful gesture that accompany the _agur_ by
which the _señoras_ reply to the salutations of the cavaliers;
the picturesque crowd, interspersed with _Gallegos_, _Pasiegas_,
Valencians, _Manolas_, and water-sellers, form a spectacle of the
greatest animation and the most charming gaiety. The _Niños de la
Cuna_ (foundlings), dressed in their blue uniform, walk at the head
of the procession. There were but very few out of this long file
of children who were endowed with pretty faces; and Hymen himself,
with all his conjugal carelessness, would have been troubled to
produce offspring uglier than were these children of Love. Then
follow the parochial banners, the clergy, silver shrines, and,
under a canopy of gold cloth, the Corpus Dei, in a sun of diamonds
of the most dazzling brilliancy.

The proverbial devoutness of the Spaniards appeared to me greatly
abated; for, with respect to it, one might well have fancied
himself in Paris at the time when it was considered fashionable
opposition not to kneel to the Host. The men hardly touched the
brim of their hats at the approach of the canopy. Catholic Spain
no longer exists. The Peninsula is now under the influence of
Voltairean and liberal ideas with respect to _feudalism_, the
_Inquisition_, and _fanaticism_. To demolish convents appears to
her, at present, the height of civilization.

One evening, as I was passing near the post-office at the corner
of the Calle de Carretas, I saw the crowd separate precipitately;
and then I perceived a brilliant galaxy of light coming up the
_Calle-Mayor_. It was the Host hastening in its carriage to the
bedside of some dying person; for the representatives of religion
do not yet go about on foot at Madrid. The people had fled, in
order to avoid the necessity of kneeling to the host as it passed.
As we are speaking of religious ceremonies, we must not forget
to mention that in Spain the cross on palls is not white, as in
France, but of the colour of brimstone. The Spaniards do not use
hearses, but carry their dead to the grave on biers.

Madrid was insupportable to us, and the two days that we were
obliged to stay there appeared, at least, two centuries. We
could think of nothing but orange-trees, lemon-trees, cachuchas,
castanets, and picturesque costumes, for every one related wonders
to us about Andalusia with that boastful magniloquence which the
Spaniards will never lose any more than the Gascons of France. At
length the long desired day arrived, for everything arrives at
last, even the day we are waiting for; and we left Madrid in a very
comfortable diligence, drawn by a troop of sturdy, close-cropped
mules, with shiny coats, and which trotted along at a dashing
pace. The diligence was lined with nankeen, and furnished with
both roller and green wooden blinds. It appeared to us the _ne
plus ultra_ of elegance, after the abominable galleys, _sillas
volantes_, and coaches, in which we had been jolted up to that
time; and it would have really proved a very agreeable conveyance,
had it not been for the furnace-like heat which calcined us, in
spite of the lightness of our dress and the continual movement of
our fans. The consequence was, that our rolling stove resounded
with a perpetual litany of "Oh, dear! _que calor!_ I am stifled!
I am melting!" with numerous other well-assorted exclamations.
We bore our sufferings patiently, however, and, with a little
grumbling, tranquilly allowed the perspiration to run, like a
cascade, down our noses and temples; for, at the end of our
fatigues, we had in perspective Granada and the Alhambra, the
dream of every poet--Granada, whose name alone makes the heaviest
and dullest man in all the world break out into exclamations of
admiration, and dance on one leg for delight.

The environs of Madrid are dull, bare, and scorched up, though less
stony on this side than on the side leading to Guadarrama. The
country, which is rather uneven than hilly, presents, everywhere,
the same uniform appearance, only broken by a few villages, all
dust and chalk, scattered here and there throughout the general
aridity, and which would not be remarked, were it not for the
square tower of their churches. Spires are rarely met with in
Spain, the square tower being the usual form of steeple. Where
two roads meet, suspicious-looking crosses stretch forth their
sinister arms; from time to time, carts drawn by oxen pass by,
with the carter asleep under his cloak; and peasants on horseback,
with a fierce expression of countenance, and their carbines at the
saddle-bows. In the middle of the day the sky is of the colour of
melting lead, and the ground of a dusty grey, interspersed with
mica, to which the greatest distance hardly imparts a bluish tint.
Not a single cluster of trees, not a shrub, not a drop of water
in the bed of dried-up torrents is to be seen; nothing, in fact,
is there to relieve the eye, or to gratify the imagination. In
order to find a little shelter from the burning rays of the sun,
you must follow the narrow line of scanty blue shade afforded by
the walls. We were, it is true, in the middle of July, which is
not exactly the time of year for cool travelling in Spain; but it
is our opinion that countries ought to be visited in their most
characteristic seasons. Spain in summer, and Russia in winter.

We met with nothing worthy of any particular notice, until we
came to the royal residence (_sitio real_) of Aranjuez. Aranjuez
is a brick mansion with stone facings, presenting a white and red
appearance, and has high slate roofs, pavilions, and weathercocks,
which call to mind the style of architecture employed under Henri
IV. and Louis XIII.; the palace of Fontainebleau, or the houses
in the Place Royale at Paris. The Tagus, which is crossed by a
suspension-bridge, keeps vegetation fresh there, much to the
admiration of the Spaniards, and allows the trees of the north
to grow to full maturity. At Aranjuez are seen elms, ash-trees,
birch-trees, and aspens, which are as great curiosities there as
Indian fig-trees, aloes, and palms would appear in France. They
pointed out to us a gallery built on purpose to enable Godoy, the
famous Prince of Peace, to pass from his house to the castle. On
leaving the village, we observed to our left the Plaza de Toros,
which is of a decided monumental appearance.

While the mules were being changed, we ran to the market to lay in
a stock of oranges and to take ices, or rather lemon snow batter,
at one of those refreshment shops which are met with in the open
air, and which are as common in Spain as wine-shops are in France.
Instead of drinking pots of bad wine and _goes_ of brandy, the
peasants and market-women take a _bebida helada_, which does not
cost more, and which does not, at all events, get into their heads
to besot their intellects. The absence of drunkenness renders the
people of the lower class much superior to the corresponding class
in those countries of ours, which we fancy to be civilized.

The name of Aranjuez, which is composed of two words, _ara_ and
_Jovis_, tells us pretty plainly that this edifice is built on the
site of an ancient temple of Jupiter. We had not time to visit the
interior of it, but this we do not regret, for all palaces are
alike. Such, too, is the case with courtiers; originality is to be
met with but among the people, and the rabble only appear to have
preserved the privilege of being poetical.

The scenery from Aranjuez to Ocaña is picturesque, without,
however, being very remarkable. Hills of graceful form, well
developed by the light, rise on each side of the route, and when
the eddies of dust in which the diligence is running, like a god
wrapped up in his cloud, are cleared away by a favourable breath
of air, they present you with a very pleasant sight. The roads,
though badly kept, are in pretty good order, thanks to this
wonderful climate, where it hardly ever rains, and to the scarcity
of vehicles, nearly all the carrying being done by beasts of burden
only.

We were to sup and sleep at Ocaña, in order to wait for the _correo
real_, so that by joining ourselves to it we might profit by its
escort, for we were about to enter La Mancha, infested at that time
by the bands of Palillos, Polichinelle, and other honest people
with whom a meeting would prove far from agreeable. We stopped at
an hotel of decent appearance, before which was a _patio_ with
columns, and, over this _patio_, a superb _tendido_, of which the
cloth, now double, now single, formed designs and symmetrical
figures by its different shades of transparency. The name of the
maker, with his address at Barcelona, was written on it by this
means very legibly. Myrtles, pomegranates, and jasmines, planted in
red clay pots, enlivened and perfumed this sort of inner court, in
which reigned a clear, subdued kind of twilight full of mystery.
The _patio_ is a delightful invention; it affords greater coolness
and more space than a room; you can walk about there, read, be
alone or mix with others. It is a neuter ground where people meet,
and where, without undergoing the tediousness of formal visits and
introductions, they end by becoming known to one another and by
forming acquaintance; and when, as at Granada or at Seville, the
_patio_ possesses a jet of water or a fountain, nothing can be more
delightful, especially in a country where the thermometer always
indicates a Senegambian heat.

While waiting for our repast, we went to take a siesta: this is a
habit which you are compelled to follow in Spain, for the heat from
two to five o'clock is such as no Parisian can form an idea of.
The pavement burns, the iron knockers on the doors grow red-hot, a
shower of fire seems to be falling from the sky; the corn bursts
from its spikes, the ground cracks like over-heated porcelain, the
grass-hoppers make their corselets grate with more vivacity than
ever, and the little air which fans your face seems to be blown
forth by the brazen mouth of a large furnace; the shops are closed,
and all the gold in the world would not induce a tradesman to sell
you the slightest article. In the streets are to be seen dogs and
Frenchmen only, according to the popular saying, which is far
from flattering for us. The guides refuse to take you to the most
insignificant monument, even though you offer them Havannah cigars
or a ticket for a bull-fight, two most seductive things for a
Spanish _cicerone_. The only thing you can do is to sleep like the
rest, and you very soon make up your mind to do so; for what else
can you do in the midst of a nation fast asleep!

Our rooms, which were whitewashed, were scrupulously clean. The
insects of which we had heard such awful descriptions did not
yet make their appearance, and our sleep was troubled by no
thousand-footed nightmare.

At five o'clock, we rose to go and take a turn while waiting for
supper. Ocaña is not rich in monumental buildings, and its best
title to celebrity is the desperate attack made by Spanish troops
on a French redout during the war of invasion. The redout was
taken, but nearly the whole of the Spanish battalion was killed.
Each hero was interred on the spot where he fell. The ranks were
so well kept, in spite of a deluge of grape, that they can still
be traced by the regularity of the graves. Diamante has written a
piece called "The Hercules of Ocaña," produced, no doubt, for some
athletic champion of prodigious strength, like the Goliath of the
Olympic Circus. Our presence at Ocaña called this circumstance to
our memory.

The last of the harvest was being got in at an epoch when the
corn scarcely begins to assume its yellow tint in France, and the
sheaves were carried to large areas of beaten earth, where horses
and mules tread out the grain beneath their unshod hoofs. Both
mules and horses are harnessed to a sort of sledge, on which the
man superintending the operations stands upright in a posture of
proud and graceful ease. Much self-command and skill are required
to keep on this frail machine, as it is whisked along by three or
four horses which are ever being lashed most lustily. A painter of
the school of Leopold Robert would not fail to turn these scenes of
Biblical and primitive simplicity to great account. Fine swarthy
faces, sparkling eyes, Madonna-like features, costumes full of
character, brilliant light, azure and sun would not fail him here
any more than in Italy.

That evening the sky was of a milky blue colour, dashed with rose;
the fields appeared, as far as the eye could reach, like an immense
sheet of pale gold, where, here and there, you perceived a cart,
looking like a small island in an ocean of light, and drawn by oxen
which were almost hidden beneath the sheaves with which the cart
was loaded. The wild notion of a picture without shade, which is so
inherent to the Chinese, was realized here. All was sun and light;
and the deepest tint that appeared upon the scene was of pearl grey.

At length we were summoned to a pretty good supper, or which, at
least, our appetites made us think so; it was served in a low room,
decorated with little paintings on glass, of somewhat curious
Venetian taste. After supper, as my companion, Eugène, and myself,
were but mediocre smokers, and as we could take but a very small
part in the conversation, on account of the necessity we were under
of saying everything we had to say in the two or three hundred
words with which we were acquainted, we withdrew to our rooms,
greatly discouraged at the different stories about robbers which
we had heard related at table, and which, as they were only half
understood, appeared all the more terrible to us.

We were forced to wait till two in the afternoon for the arrival
of the _correo real_, for it would not have been prudent to set
out without it. We had besides a special escort of four horsemen,
armed with blunderbusses, pistols, and large sabres. They were men
of commanding stature, with pointed hats, large red sashes, velvet
breeches, leather gaiters and characteristic features, encircled by
enormous black whiskers, all which made them look more like robbers
than guards and whom it was a cunning contrivance to take with you,
in order to avoid meeting them on the road.

Twenty soldiers huddled together in a galley, followed the _correo
real_. A galley is a two or four wheeled cart, without springs,
and having its bottom formed of an esparto network, instead of
boards. This short description will suffice to give an idea of the
position of these poor wretches, who were forced to stand, and
who could only keep themselves from falling by catching hold of
the sides of the cart. Add to this the rapidity at which we were
going--four leagues an hour--a stifling heat, with the sun darting
down his rays perpendicularly, and you will agree with me that it
required a very great stock of heroic goodhumour to think such a
situation funny. And yet these poor soldiers, scarcely covered by
their ragged uniforms, with their stomachs empty, with nothing to
drink but the heated water in their leathern bottles, and tossed
about like mice in a trap, did nothing but laugh and sing all along
the road. The sobriety and patience of the Spaniards in supporting
fatigue are something wonderful. In this respect they have remained
Arabs. It would be impossible to show more disregard for material
life than they do. But these soldiers, who were without bread and
shoes, had a guitar.

All that part of the kingdom of Toledo which we passed through is
frightfully arid, and announces the approach of La Mancha, the
country of Don Quixote, and the most desolate and sterile province
of Spain.

We soon passed La Guardia, a little insignificant market-town, of
the most miserable appearance. At Tembleque we bought a few dozen
garters for the use of some pretty legs at Paris; these garters,
of all colours, cerise, orange, and sky-blue, were ornamented
with gold or silver thread, and marked with various-lettered
devices, that would put to the blush the most gallant ones on the
trumpets bought at the _fête_ of St. Cloud. Tembleque has the same
reputation for its garters as Châtellerault, in France, has for its
pen-knives.

While we were bargaining for our garters, we heard by our side a
hoarse, discordant, menacing growl, like that of a mad dog. We
turned round quickly, but not without a certain amount of fear, for
we did not know how to speak to Spanish dogs, and then we perceived
that this growl came not from an animal, but from a man.

Never did nightmare, placing its knee on the chest of a delirious
patient, produce a more frightful monster. Quasimodo is a very
Phœbus by the side of it. A square forehead, two sunken eyes,
glaring with a savage fire, a nose so flat that its place was
distinguished only by the nostrils, with the lower jaw advancing
full two inches beyond the upper one--such, in a few words, is
the portrait of this scarecrow, the profile of which formed a
concave line, like those crescents on which the face of the moon is
represented in the almanack of Liege. The calling of this wretch
consisted in being without a nose, and in imitating dogs, a calling
which he exercised wonderfully well, for he was more noseless than
death himself, and made alone more uproar than all the inmates put
together of the Barrière du Combat at feeding-time.

Puerto Lapiche consists of a few tumbling-down huts, huddled
together on the declivity of a hill which is itself full of
cracks and chasms, and become so dry and rotten by the heat that
it is continually giving way and being torn asunder by the most
curiously-shaped rents. It represents aridity and desolation
in its highest degree. Everything is of the colour of cork and
pumice-stone. The fire of heaven seems to have passed over it; and
the whole scene is smothered by grey dust, as fine as powdered
sandstone. This wretchedness is so much the more heartrending as
the lustre of an implacable sky makes the whole poverty of the
place most prominently apparent. The cloudy melancholy of the
north is nothing in comparison with the luminous sadness of warm
countries.

On beholding such wretched hovels, you feel yourself full of
pity for the robbers who are obliged to live by marauding in a
country where you might make a round of ten leagues and not find
wherewithal to cook an egg. The resources offered by the diligences
and galleys are really insufficient, and the poor brigands who
vegetate in La Mancha are often obliged to be contented with a
supper composed of a handful of those sweet acorns which were the
delight of Sancho Panza. What is it possible to take from people
who have neither money nor pockets, who live in houses of which
the whole furniture is composed of four bare walls, and whose only
utensils are a saucepan and an earthenware pitcher? To pillage such
villages appears to me one of the most lugubrious fancies which can
well enter the head of a robber out of work.

A little beyond Puerto Lapiche you enter La Mancha, where we
perceived to our right two or three windmills, which lay claim to
having victoriously sustained the shock of Don Quixote's lance,
and which, for the moment, were listlessly turning their fans with
the aid of an asthmatic breeze. The _venta_ at which we stopped
to imbibe two or three jars of fresh water, also boasts of having
entertained the immortal hero of Cervantes.

We will not fatigue our readers with a description of our
monotonous route through a stony, flat, and dusty country, only
enlivened, at long intervals, with a few olive-trees, whose foliage
is diseased and of a bluish green; where nothing is seen but tawny,
haggard, mummified peasants, with scorched, rusty hats, short
breeches, and coarse gaiters of darkish cloth, carrying a tattered
jacket on their shoulders, and driving before them a mangy ass
whose coat is white with age, whose ears are enervated, and whose
back is pitiful to behold; and where you see at the entrance of the
villages nothing but half-naked children, as dark as mulattoes, and
who view you with wild and astonished looks as you pass by.

Dying of hunger, we arrived at Manzanares in the middle of the
night. The courier who preceded us, profiting by his right as
first comer and his acquaintance with the people of the hotel, had
exhausted all the provisions, which consisted, it is true, but of
three or four eggs and a piece of ham. We uttered the most piercing
and heart-rending cries, and declared that we would set fire to the
house and roast the landlady herself, if there were no other dish
forthcoming. This display of energy procured us, at about two in
the morning, some supper, to prepare which they had been obliged
to wake up half the town. We had a quarter of kid, eggs with
tomato-sauce, ham and goat's-milk cheese, with some pretty good
white table-wine. We all supped together in the yard by the light
of three or four brass lamps, very much like the funereal lamps of
antiquity. The flame of each lamp producing, through the caprices
of the wind, fantastic shades and lights, gave us the appearance
of so many lamiæ and ghouls tearing asunder pieces of disinterred
children: and that the repast might have a perfect appearance of
magic, a tall blind girl, guided by the noise, approached the
table, and began singing couplets to a plaintive and monotonous
air, like a vague sibylline incantation. On learning that we were
French, she improvised, in honour of us, some eulogical stanzas,
which we rewarded with a few reals.

Before getting into our conveyance, we went to take a turn in the
village; we were obliged to grope our way, it is true, but that
was better than remaining in the yard of the inn. We reached the
Market-place, not, however, without having stumbled over some one
sleeping in the open air. In the summer, the people generally
sleep in the street, some under their cloaks, and some beneath
mule-cloths, while others have a sack filled with chopped straw
(these are sybarites); and then again there are some who lie on the
bare bosom of their mother Cybele, with a stone for a pillow. The
peasants who had arrived in the night were asleep, pell-mell, in
the midst of curious vegetables and wild productions, or between
the legs of their mules and donkeys, where they were waiting for
daylight, which was soon to appear.

By the moon's faint light, we indistinctly perceived in the
obscurity a sort of embattled antique edifice, where, by the
whiteness of the plaster, we recognised the defences made during
the last civil war, and which time had not yet succeeded in
harmonizing with the main building. As a conscientious traveller,
this is all we can say of Manzanares.

We got into our conveyance again; sleep crept over us, and when we
again opened our eyes we were in the environs of Val-de-Peñas, a
town celebrated for its wine: the ground and hills, studded with
constellated stones, were of a red hue and singularly crude, and we
began to distinguish on the horizon ranges of mountains serrated
like saws, and whose outline was very plainly marked, in spite of
their great distance.

Val-de-Peñas possesses nothing above the common, and owes all its
reputation to its vineyards. Its name--the Valley of Stones--is
perfectly justified. We stopped here to breakfast, and, by an
inspiration from Heaven, I first of all took my own chocolate, and
then that intended for my companion, who had not yet risen; and,
foreseeing future famines, I crammed into my cup as many _bunuelos_
(a kind of small fritter) as it would hold, so as to make a sort
of pretty substantial porridge; for I had not yet learned the
abstemiousness of the camel, which, I did some time afterwards
by dint of practising abstinence worthy of an anchorite of the
primitive times. I was not then used to the climate, and I had
brought from France a most unnatural appetite, which inspired the
natives of the country with respectful astonishment.

In a few minutes we set off all in a hurry, for we were obliged
to keep close to the _correo real_, in order not to lose the
advantage of its protection. On leaning out of the vehicle to take
a last survey of Val-de-Peñas, I let my cap fall into the road: a
_muchacho_ of twelve or fifteen years of age perceived this, and,
in order to get a few _cuartos_, picked it up, and began running
after the diligence, which was now at some distance from him; he
overtook it, however, though he was barefooted and running on a
road paved with sharp-pointed stones. I threw him a handful of
sous, which certainly made him the most opulent urchin in the
whole place. I mention this insignificant circumstance merely
because it is characteristic of the swiftness of the Spaniards,
who are the best walkers in the world, and the most active runners
to be met with. We have already had occasion to speak of those
foot-postilions called _zagales_, who follow carriages, going at
full speed, for leagues together, without appearing to be in the
least fatigued, or without even perspiring.

At Santa Cruz we were offered for sale all sorts of small knives
and _navajas_: Santa Cruz and Albacete are renowned for this fancy
cutlery. These _navajas_, of Arabian and very characteristic
barbarous taste, have brass handles, which are cut through, and in
the perforations of which are seen red, green, and blue spangles.
Coarse enamel work, but cleanly executed, decorates the blades,
which are made in the form of a fish, and are always very sharp;
most of them bear some such motto as the following: _Soy de uno
solo_, "I belong to one only;" or _Cuando esta vivora pica, no
hay remedio en la botica_, "When this serpent stings, there is
no remedy in medicine." Sometimes the blade has three parallel
lines cut down it, the hollows of which are painted red, and then
it presents a truly formidable appearance. The length of these
_navajas_ varies from three inches to three feet; a few _majos_
(smart peasants) have some which, when open, are as long as a
sabre; the blade is kept open in its place by a jointed spring, or
a sliding ring. The _navaja_ is the favourite arm of the Spaniards,
especially of the people of the lower class; they handle it with
wonderful dexterity, and form moreover a shield by rolling their
cape round their left arm. This is an art which, like fencing, has
its laws, and _navaja_-masters are as numerous in Andalusia as
fencing-masters are at Paris. Every one who uses the _navaja_ has
his secret thrusts, and his particular ways of striking: adepts,
they say, can, on viewing a wound, recognise the _artiste_ who has
inflicted it, as we recognise a painter by his touch.

The undulations of the ground now began to be more marked and
more frequent--in fact, we did nothing but ascend and descend. We
were approaching the Sierra Morena, which forms the limits of
Andalusia. Behind that line of violet-coloured mountains lay hidden
the paradise of our dreams. The stones already began to change
into rocks, and the hills into towering mountains: thistles, six
or seven feet high, rose up on the sides of the road, like the
halberds of invisible soldiers. Though I have no pretensions to
being an ass, I am very fond of thistles (a taste which is common
both to myself and butterflies), and those I saw here surprised me.
The thistle is a superb plant, which can be most advantageously
studied for the production of ornamental designs. No piece of
Gothic architecture possesses cleaner or more delicately-cut
arabesques or foliage. From time to time we perceived in the
neighbouring fields large yellow-looking patches, as if sacks of
chopped straw had been emptied there; but this straw rose up in a
cloud when we approached, and noisily flew away. What we mistook
for straw was shoals of locusts, and there must have been millions
of them: this reminded one strongly of Egypt.

It was somewhere near this place that, for the first time in my
life, I really suffered from hunger. Ugolino in his tower could not
have felt more famished than I did, and I had not, like him, four
sons to devour. The reader, who has seen me swallow two cups of
chocolate at Val-de-Peñas, is perhaps astonished at this premature
hunger; but Spanish cups are not larger than a thimble, and do not
hold more than two or three spoonfuls. My melancholy was greatly
augmented at the _venta_, where we left our escort, on seeing a
magnificent omelet, intended for the soldiers' dinner, assume a
golden hue beneath a sunbeam that came down the chimney. I prowled
about it like a ravenous wolf, but it was too well guarded for me
to carry off. Luckily, however, a lady from Granada, who was in the
diligence with us, took pity on my martyrdom, and gave me a slice
of La Mancha ham cured in sugar, with a piece of bread which she
kept in reserve in one of the pockets of the vehicle. May this ham
be returned to her an hundredfold!

Not far from this _venta_, on the right hand side of the road,
stood some pillars, on which were seen three or four malefactors'
heads--a spectacle always adapted to tranquillize your mind, and
which proves that you are in a civilized country. The road kept
rising, and assuming various zigzag forms. We were about to pass
by the _Puerto de los Perros_: this is a narrow defile--a breach,
in fact, made in the mountain by a torrent, which leaves just
room enough for the road by its side. The _Puerto de los Perros_
(passage of dogs) is thus named, because through it the vanquished
Moors went out of Andalusia, taking with them the happiness and
civilization of Spain. Spain, which stands in the same relation to
Africa as Greece did to Asia, is not fitted for European manners.
The genius of the East is apparent there in all its forms, and it
is perhaps to be regretted that Spain is not still Moorish and
Mahometan.

It would be impossible to imagine anything more picturesque or
grand than this entrance to Andalusia. The defile is cut through
immense rocks of red marble, the gigantic layers of which rise one
above the other with a sort of architectural regularity. These
enormous blocks, with their large transversal fissures--those
veins of mountain marble, a sort of terrestrial subject, deprived
of skin, on which to study the anatomy of the globe--are of such
proportions, that they make the largest granite of Egypt appear
microscopical by their side. In the interstices are palm oaks and
enormous cork-trees, which do not appear larger there than do tufts
of herb on an ordinary-sized wall. On reaching the bottom of the
defile, you perceive that the vegetation increases in richness, and
forms an impenetrable thicket, through which you see, sparkling in
different places, the bright water of the torrent. The edge is so
rugged on the side of the road, that it has been judged prudent to
place a parapet along it, without which the diligence, which is
always going very fast, and which it is very difficult to drive, on
account of the frequent bends, might easily turn a somersault of
some five or six hundred feet.

It was in the Sierra Morena that the knight of the rueful
countenance accomplished, in imitation of Amadis on the rock, that
famous act of penance which consisted in tumbling about in his
shirt on the sharpest rocks, and that Sancho Panza, the positive
man, the representative of vulgar reason by the side of noble
madness, found Cardenio's portmanteau so well filled with ducats
and fine shirts. You cannot make a step in Spain without meeting
with something to remind you of Don Quixote; so truly national is
the work of Cervantes, and so true is it that these two personages
sum up in themselves the whole Spanish character--chivalrous
exaltation of mind, and an adventurous spirit joined to great good
practical sense, and a sort of goodnature full of _finesse_ and
causticity.

At Venta de Cardona where we changed mules, I saw a pretty little
child with a complexion of the most dazzling whiteness, lying
in his cradle, and resembling a wax Jesus in his manger. The
Spaniards, when they are not burnt by the sun, are in general
exceedingly fair.

As soon as the Sierra Morena is passed, the aspect of the country
undergoes a total change; it is like going all at once from Europe
to Africa; vipers, crawling to their nests, leave their oblique
marks on the fine gravel of the roads; and the aloe begins to
brandish its large thorny sabres at the sides of the ditches.
These large fans of thick, brawny, bluish-grey leaves immediately
throw a different appearance over the whole landscape. You feel
that you are in a new country; you understand that you have
really quitted Paris; but the difference in the climate, in the
architecture, and in the costumes, does not astonish you so much
as the presence of the large vegetables belonging to the torrid
regions, and which we are only accustomed to behold in hothouses,
in France. The laurels, the holm oaks, the cork, and the fig-trees,
with their varnished and metallic-looking foliage, have about them
something free, robust, and wild, which indicates a climate in
which nature is more powerful than man, and in which she can do
without him.

Before us extended the fine country of Andalusia, unfolding itself
to our view, like an immense panorama. The scene possessed the
grandeur and appearance of the sea: chains of mountains, which
distance confounded with the sky itself, succeeded one another,
with the gentlest undulations, like long rows of billows of azure.
Large clouds of white vapour filled up the intervals; and here and
there the rays of the sun streaked with gold some of the nearer
mountain-tops, and made them sparkle with a thousand colours like
a pigeon's breast. Other ridges, curiously irregular, resembled
those draperies in ancient pictures which were yellow on one side
and blue on the other. The whole was inundated with a most dazzling
and splendid light, similar to that which must have illuminated the
terrestrial paradise. It streamed through this ocean of mountains
like liquid gold and silver, dashing a phosphorescent foam of
spangles on every obstacle it met with. The scene before us was
much more vast than the grandest perspectives of Martin, and
infinitely more beautiful. The infinite in things filled with light
is sublime and stupendous in a far different manner to the infinite
in things smothered in darkness.

While gazing on this wonderful picture, which varied in appearance
and presented us with fresh splendours at each turn of our wheels,
we saw appear on the horizon the pointed roofs of Carolina's
symmetrical pavilions, a sort of model village, or agricultural
phalansterium, formerly founded by the Count of Florida Blanca, and
peopled by him, at a great expense, with Germans and Swiss. This
village, built all of a sudden, and raised at the will of one man,
possesses that tedious regularity which is unknown in places which
rise gradually, and in obedience to the caprice of chance and time.
Everything has been done by line and rule: from the middle of the
place you can see the whole town; here is the market of the Plaza
de Toros; here is the church, and here is the house of the alcade.
All this is certainly very nice, but I prefer the most wretched
village which has taken its form at random. The colony has not,
however, succeeded; the Swiss became affected with nostalgia and
died off like flies, on merely hearing the bells sound; the ringing
of them was therefore obliged to be discontinued. They did not all
die, however, and the population of Carolina still preserves traces
of its German origin. We had a solid dinner at Carolina served up
with some excellent wine, and I was not obliged to take double
portions: we now no longer travelled with the courier, as the roads
are perfectly safe in these parts.

Aloe-trees, more and more African in size and shape, continued
to rise along the sides of the road, and towards the left a long
garland of flowers of the deepest rose-colour, glittering in a
foliage of emeralds, marked out all the sinuosities of the bed of
a dried up rivulet. Profiting by a halt made to change mules, my
companion ran and gathered an enormous bouquet of these flowers;
they were rose-bays of the greatest beauty and freshness. We might
put to this rivulet, with the name of which I am not acquainted,
and which perhaps has none, the same question that Monsieur Casimir
Delavigne puts to the Greek river--

      "Eurotas, Eurotas, que font tes lauriers-roses?"

To the rose-bays succeeded, like a melancholy reflection after
a silvery burst of laughter, tall olive-trees whose pale leaves
remind you of the white foliage of the willows of the North, and
which harmonize admirably well with the ashy colour of the ground.
These leaves, which are of a grave, austere, and gentle tint, were
most judiciously chosen by the ancients, those skilful estimators
of natural evidence, as the symbol of peace and wisdom.

It was about four o'clock when we arrived at Baylen, famous for the
disastrous capitulation which is known by this name. We were to
pass the night there, and while waiting for supper we went to take
a stroll through the town and about the environs with the lady from
Granada, and a very pretty young girl who was going with her father
and mother to take sea-baths at Malaga; for the general reserve of
the Spaniards quickly gives way to polite and cordial familiarity,
as soon as they are certain that you are neither a commercial
traveller, nor a tight-rope dancer, nor a hawker of pomatum.

The church of Baylen, the construction of which does not date much
further back than the sixteenth century, astonished me by its
strange colour. Its stone and marble baked by the sun of Spain,
instead of turning black as such things do in our damp climate, had
assumed red hues of the most extraordinary vividness, and which
even inclined to saffron and purple, resembling in their tints
vine-leaves at the end of autumn. At the side of the church, a
palm-tree, the first I had ever seen in the open air, rose above
a little wall gilt by the reflection of the sun's burning rays,
and abruptly spread out its branches in the dark azure of the
heavens. This palm-tree--a sudden revelation from the East--thus
met unexpectedly at the corner of a street, produced a singular
effect on me. I expected, every instant, to see the profile of the
camel's ostrich-like neck appear in the glimmering light thrown out
by the setting sun, and the white bournous of the Arab float along
the ranks of the caravan.

Some rather picturesque ruins of ancient fortifications presented
to our view a tower, in a sufficiently good state of preservation
to allow us to ascend it by the aid of our hands and feet and the
jutting out of the stones. We were rewarded for our trouble by one
of the most magnificent sights it is possible to behold. The city
of Baylen, with its tiled roofs, its red church, and its white
houses huddled round the foot of the tower like a flock of goats,
formed a charming foreground: further on were immense corn-fields,
undulating like waves of gold, and right at the back, above several
ranges of mountains, the ridge of the Sierra Nevada glittered in
the distance like a chain of silver. Veins of snow, played on by
the light, brightly sparkled and sent forth prismatic flashes;
while the sun, similar to a large golden wheel, of which its disc
was the nave, spread out its flaming rays, like spokes, in a sky
tinged with all the hues of the agate and the advanturine.

The inn at which we were to pass the night was a large building
consisting but of one immense room, with a fireplace at each end, a
roof of timberwork, shiny and black with smoke, racks on each side
for horses, mules, and donkeys; and having, for the accommodation
of travellers, a few small lateral chambers, containing each a bed
formed of three planks placed on two trestles, and covered with
those pellicles of canvass, in which floated a few lumps of wool,
and which hotel-keepers, with the usual effrontery and _sang froid_
which characterize them, call mattresses; but this, however, did
not hinder us from snoring like Epimenides and the Seven Sleepers
all together.

We set off very early in the morning to avoid the heat, and we
again saw the beautiful rose-bays, as resplendent as glory and
as blooming as love, which had enchanted us the evening before.
The Guadalquiver, with its troubled and yellowish waters, soon
appeared to bar our passage; we crossed it in a ferry-boat, and
took the road to Jaen. To our left was pointed out to us the tower
of Torrequebradilla, on which a sunbeam was playing, and we soon
perceived the strange outline of the city of Jaen, the capital
of the province of that name. An enormous mountain, of the colour
of ochre, as tawny as a lion's skin, variegated with stripes of
red and brown, and enveloped in clouds of light, rises abruptly in
the middle of the city; massive towers, and long, zigzag lines of
fortification streak its barren sides and give them a fantastic
and picturesque appearance. The Cathedral, an immense mass of
architecture, which seems, from a distance, to be larger than the
town itself, rears its head haughtily, like an artificial mountain
by the side of the natural one. This cathedral, which is of the
Renaissance style of architecture, and which boasts of possessing
the true handkerchief in which Saint Veronica took the impression
of our Saviour's face, was built by the duke of Medina Coeli. It
is certainly a handsome building, but we had imagined it, at a
distance, to be both more antique and more curious.

On our way from the _Parador_ to the cathedral, I took care to
inspect the play-bills, and found that, the evening before,
_Mérope_ had been played, and that that evening would be given
"El Campanero de San Pablo," _por el illustrissimo señor don Jose
Bouchardy_; or, in other words, "Le Sonneur de Saint Paul," by my
friend Bouchardy. To have your pieces played at Jaen, a barbarous
town, where the inhabitants never go out without a poniard
in their belt and a carabine on their shoulder, is certainly
very flattering, and very few of our contemporary geniuses are
able to boast of a like success. If we formerly borrowed a few
_chefs-d'œuvre_ of the Spanish stage, we fully repay, at present,
in vaudevilles and in melodramas, the value of all we have taken.

On leaving the cathedral we returned, with the other travellers,
to the _Parador_, the appearance of which seemed to promise
an excellent repast; a _café_ was attached to it, and it had
quite the look of a European and civilized establishment. Some
one discovered, however, on taking his place, that the bread
was as hard as a mill-stone, and asked for some other. But the
hotel-keeper obstinately refused to change it. During the quarrel,
another person perceived that the dishes had been warmed up, and
must have already appeared on the table some time back. Hereupon,
every person present began to utter the most plaintive cries
and to insist on having a perfectly fresh dinner that had never
appeared before. And now for the secret of this: the diligence
which preceded us had been stopped by the brigands of La Mancha,
and the travellers, whom they had carried off into the mountains,
had not been able to partake of the repast prepared for them by the
hotel-keeper at Jaen. The latter, in order not to be out of pocket,
had kept the dishes, and served them up again for us; but he was
deceived in his expectations, for we all left his house, and went
elsewhere to satisfy our hunger. The unlucky dinner was, no doubt,
presented, for a third time, to the next travellers.

We repaired to an obscure _posada_, where, after waiting a long
while, we obtained some cutlets, some eggs, and a salad, all served
up in chipped plates, accompanied by odd knives and forks, and
glasses, each of which belonged to a different set. The banquet
was very mediocre, but it was seasoned with so much laughter, and
so many jokes about the comic fury of the hotel-keeper when he saw
his company leave in procession, as well as about the fate of the
poor victims to whom he would not fail to re-present his emaciated
chickens, warmed up for the third time, as perfectly fresh, that
we were fully compensated, and even more than compensated, for the
poorness of our fare. As soon as the icy reserve of the Spaniards
once begins to wear away, they immediately indulge in an infantine
and _naïve_ gaiety, full of charming sweetness. The least thing
makes them laugh till the tears run down their faces.

It was at Jaen that I saw more national and picturesque costumes
than anywhere else. The men were attired, for the most part, in
blue velvet breeches, adorned with silver filigrane buttons, and
Ronda gaiters embellished with aiglets and stitching, and worked
with arabesques on leather of a darker colour. It is considered the
height of elegance to button but the first two or three buttons, at
the top and bottom, so as to let the calf be seen. Wide sashes of
red or yellow silk, jackets of brown cloth variously trimmed, blue
or maroon cloaks, pointed hats with slouched brims, ornamented with
bands of velvet and silk tassels, complete the costume, which is
very similar to the ancient dress of Italian brigands: others wore
what is called a _vestido de cazador_ (hunter's dress), which is
made entirely of buckskin of a tawny colour, and of green velvet.

Some women of the lower class had red cloaks and hoods, which
seemed to make the darker part of the crowd sparkle brightly, and
to bespangle it with scarlet. The fantastic style of dress, the
swarthy complexion, the energy depicted in the features, the fiery
eyes, with the calm and impassible attitude of these _majos_, more
numerous here than anywhere else, impart to the population of Jaen
an aspect more African than European: an illusion which is kept
up still more by the intense heat of the climate, the dazzling
whiteness of the houses, which are all whitewashed in the Arabian
fashion, the tawny colour of the ground, and the unchanging azure
of the sky. The following proverb on Jaen is in current use in
Spain: "Ugly town, bad people;" but no painter would ever admit it
to be true. But then, there as here, a handsome town in the eyes
of most people is a town laid out by rule and line, and furnished
with a certain number of lamps and tradesmen.

On leaving Jaen, you enter a valley which stretches as far as the
Vega de Granada. The beginning of it is arid; barren mountains
continually crumbling away through dryness scorch you, like burning
mirrors, with their canescent reverberation; the only sign of
vegetation is to be found in a few sickly-looking tufts of fennel.
But soon the valley becomes narrower and deeper; streams begin
to flow, and vegetation reappears, bringing with it shade and
coolness. The _Rio_ of Jaen occupies the bottom of the valley,
where it rushes rapidly along between the stones and rocks which
torment it and stop its course at every instant. By it runs the
road, which follows it in all its sinuosities; for, in mountainous
countries, the torrents are as yet the most skilful engineers in
tracing out routes, and the wisest thing to do is to follow their
directions.

[Illustration: VEGA DE GRANADA.]

A peasant's cottage at which we stopped to drink was surrounded
by two or three little gutters of running water, which emptied
themselves, at a short distance further on, into a cluster of
pomegranate-trees, myrtles, pistachio-trees, and others of every
kind, in a most extraordinarily flourishing condition. It was so
long since we had seen anything really green, that this wild and
almost entirely uncultivated garden appeared a little terrestrial
paradise to us.

The young girl who brought us our beverage in one of those
delightful porous clay pots which keep the water so cool, was
extremely pretty; her eyes were long, reaching to beneath the
temples, and her mouth, which was as blooming and as red as a
beautiful pink, contrasted admirably with her tawny complexion. She
wore a flannel petticoat and velvet shoes, of which she appeared
very proud and careful. This style of beauty, which is frequently
met with in Granada, is evidently Moorish.

At one point, the valley becomes extremely narrow, and the rocks
project to such an extent, that they but just leave room enough
for the Rio. Formerly, vehicles were obliged to enter and proceed
along the very bed of the torrent, which it was somewhat perilous
for them to do, on account of the holes and stones at the bottom of
the river, and of the rising of the water, which, in winter, must
be considerable. In order to remedy this inconvenience, a viaduct,
similar to a railway tunnel, has been made right through one of the
rocks. This subterraneous passage, which is on a rather extensive
scale, was constructed only a few years back.

The valley soon widens again, however, and the road ceases to be
obstructed. Here my recollection fails me for several leagues.
Overcome by the heat, which the weather, inclining to storm,
rendered suffocating, I fell asleep; and when I awoke, night, which
comes on so suddenly in southern climates, enveloped everything,
and an awful wind was sweeping before it clouds of inflamed dust:
this wind must have been a very near relation of the African
sirocco, and I don't know how we escaped being stifled. The form of
every object disappeared in the fog of dust; and the sky, generally
so splendid during the summer night, resembled the vault of an
oven: it was impossible to see two paces before you. We entered
Granada at about two in the morning, and alighted at the _Fonda del
Comercio_, a _soi-disant_ French hotel, where there were no sheets
on the beds, and where we slept on the tables in our clothes: but
these trifling tribulations produced little effect on us; for we
were at Granada, and, in a few hours, we should see the Alhambra
and the Generalife.

Our first care was to request a cicerone to take us to a _casa de
pupilos_,--that is, a private house in which boarders are received,
for, as it was our intention to remain some time at Granada, the
mediocre hospitality of the _Fonda del Comercio_ was far from
calculated to promote our comfort during a long sojourn. This
_cicerone_, of the name of Louis, was a Frenchman, and came from
Farmoutiers in Brie. He had deserted during the French invasion
under Bonaparte, and had lived at Granada for twenty years. He
was the most comical figure imaginable: his height--he was five
feet eight--contrasted most singularly with his little head, which
was as wrinkled as a shrivelled apple and about as large as your
fist. Being deprived of all communication with France, he had
preserved his Brie jargon in all its native purity, spoke like an
Opéra Comique Jeannot, and seemed to be perpetually reciting the
words of Monsieur Etienne. In spite of so long a sojourn, his thick
head had refused to stock itself with a single new idiom: he was
hardly acquainted with the most indispensable phrases. The only
things Spanish he had about him were the _alpargatas_, and the
little Andalusian hat with its turned-up brim. The fact, however,
of being Spanish even to this extent sorely vexed him, and he
revenged himself by showering on every Spaniard he met all sorts
of injurious epithets--in his Brie jargon, be it understood, for
Master Louis had a particular dread of hard blows, and took as much
care of his skin as if it had been worth something.

He took us to a very respectable house, in the _Calle de Parragas_,
near the _Plazuela de San Antonio_, and at a stone's throw from
the _Carrera del Darro_. The mistress of this boarding-house
had lived for a long time at Marseilles and spoke French, which
circumstance immediately induced us to take up our abode there, as
our vocabulary was still very limited.

They put us into a room on the ground floor: this room was
whitewashed, and its entire furniture consisted of a rose of
different colours in the middle of the ceiling, but then it had
the advantage of opening into a _patio_, surrounded by white
marble columns with Moorish capitals, procured, no doubt, at the
demolition of some ancient Arabian palace. A little basin, with a
jet of water in it, dug in the middle of the court, kept the whole
place cool; an immense piece of esparto matting, which formed the
_tendido_, let in a subdued light, and made the ground, paved and
marked out into compartments with pebbles, glitter here and there,
as if studded with shining stars.

It was in the _patio_ that we took our meals, read, and lived. We
used our room for hardly anything but to dress and sleep in. Were
it not for the _patio_, an architectural arrangement which reminds
you of the ancient Roman _cavædium_, the houses in Andalusia would
not be inhabitable. The sort of hall which precedes it is generally
paved with small pebble-stones of various colours, forming designs
in rough mosaic-work, now representing vases of flowers, now
soldiers and caltrops, or simply stating the time when the _patio_
was constructed.

From the top of our abode, which was surmounted by a kind of
_mirador_, we could perceive, above the summit of a hill standing
out boldly on the blue sky, and through groups of trees, the
massive towers of the Alhambra, clothed by the sun in deep red,
fire-like tints. The view was rendered complete by two large
cypresses placed in juxtaposition, and the dark points of which
rose into the sky above the walls of red. These cypresses are never
lost sight of: whether you are climbing the snow-streaked sides of
the Mulhacen, or wandering about the Vega or the Sierra de Elvira,
they are always to be perceived, dark and motionless in the mist
of the blue or golden vapour with which the roofs of the houses
appear, at a distance, to be enveloped.

Granada is built on three hills, at the end of the plain of the
Vega: the Vermilion Towers--thus named on account of their colour
(_Torres Bermejas_), and which are asserted to be of Roman or even
Phœnician origin--occupy the first and the least elevated of these
eminences; the Alhambra, which is in itself an entire city, covers
the second and highest hill with its square towers, connected
with one another by lofty walls and immense substructures, which
form an enclosure containing gardens, woods, houses, and squares;
the Albaycin is situated on the third hillock, which is separated
from the others by a deep ravine choked with vegetation and full
of cactuses, coloquintidas, pistachio-trees, pomegranate-trees,
rose-bays, and tufts of flowers, and at the bottom of which flows
the Darro, with the rapidity of an Alpine torrent. The Darro, which
has gold in its stream, traverses the city now beneath the open
sky, now under bridges so long that they rather merit the name of
vaults, and joins itself in the Vega, at a little distance from the
parade, to the Xenil which is contented with containing silver.
The course of the torrent through the city is called _Carrera del
Darro_, and a magnificent view is obtained from the balconies of
those houses which border it. The Darro wears away its shores
very much, and causes frequent slips of earth; there exists, in
consequence, an old couplet, sung by children, which alludes to
this mania for carrying everything away, and accounts for it in a
peculiar manner. The following are the lines in question:--

      "Darro tiene prometido
      El casarse con Xenil
      Y le ha de llevar en dote
      Plaza Nueva y Zacatin,"

The gardens called _Carmenes del Darro_, and of which such charming
descriptions are to be found in Spanish and Moorish poetry, are
situated on the banks of the _Carrera_, on the same side as the
fountain of _los Avellanos_.

The city is thus divided into four quarters: the Antequerula,
which occupies the brow of the hill, or rather of the mountain,
on which the Alhambra is situated; the Alhambra and its appendix
the Generalife; the Albaycin, formerly a vast fortress, but now
a ruined and depopulated quarter; and Granada proper, which
extends into the plain round the cathedral, and the place of the
_Vivarambla_, which forms a separate quarter.

Such is the topographical aspect of Granada, traversed in its
entire width by the Darro, bordered by the Xenil, which washes the
alameda (parade), and sheltered by the Sierra Neveda, which you
perceive from the corner of every street, and which seems so near,
in consequence of the transparency of the air, that you fancy you
can touch it with your hand from the balcony or the _mirador_ of
your house.

The general aspect of Granada greatly deceives the ideas you
may have formed. In spite of yourself--in spite of the numerous
deceptions you have already experienced--you cannot bring your
mind to believe that three or four hundred years, and streams
of matter-of-fact citizens have passed over the theatre of so
many romantic and chivalrous actions. You picture to yourself a
half-Moorish, half-Gothic city, where open-worked towers are mixed
with minarets, and where gables alternate with terraced roofs;
you expect to see houses sculptured and ornamented with coats of
arms and heroic devices, grotesque buildings, with their stories
overlapping one another, projecting joists, windows adorned with
Persian carpets and blue and white vases--in short, the reality
of an opera scene, representing some wonderful perspective of the
Middle Ages.

The people you meet dressed in modern costumes, wearing
broad-brimmed hats and long frock-coats, involuntarily produce on
you a disagreeable effect, and appear more ridiculous than they
really are; for, after all, they cannot be expected to walk about,
for the sake of the local colouring, in the Moorish _albornoz_ of
the time of Boabdil, or in the iron armour of the time of Ferdinand
and Isabella the Catholic. Like nearly all the citizens of every
town in Spain, they think it necessary for their honour to show
that they are not at all picturesque, and to prove, by the means
of trousers and straps, their progress in civilization. Such is
the prevailing idea which occupies their minds; they are afraid
of appearing barbarous or backward; and when you admire the wild
beauty of their country, they humbly beg you to excuse them for
having no railways yet, and for being without steam-engines in
their manufactories. One of these honest citizens, to whom I was
extolling the charms of Granada, replied, "It is the best lighted
city in Andalusia. Just look at the number of its lamps; but what a
pity it is that they are not gas ones!"

Granada is gay, smiling, animated, although much fallen from its
former splendour. The inhabitants are everywhere, and well merit
the name of a numerous population; the carriages are handsomer and
more plentiful than at Madrid. The sprightliness of the Andalusians
fills the streets with bustle and life--things unknown to the grave
Castilian, who, as he goes along, makes no more noise than his
shadow: this remark particularly applies to the Carrera del Darro,
the Zacatin, the Plaza Nueva, the Calle de los Gomeles, which leads
to the Alhambra, to the square before the theatre, to the entrances
to the parade, and to all the leading thoroughfares. The rest of
the city is intersected in all directions by inextricable lanes of
three or four feet in width, through which no vehicles can pass,
and which remind you of the Moorish streets of Algiers. The only
sound heard there is the noise made by the hoof of a donkey or a
mule, which strikes a light every now and then on the glittering
flints which pave the road, or the monotonous tinkling of a guitar
which some one is playing at the bottom of a yard.

The balconies, furnished with blinds and ornamented with shrubs
and vases of flowers, the vine-runners creeping from one window
to another, the rose-bays raising their blooming flowers above
the garden walls, the curious effect of the sun and shade, whose
fantastic frolics remind you of Decamps's pictures representing
Turkish villages, the women seated before the doors, the half-naked
children playing and rolling about at their sides, the donkeys
going backwards and forwards loaded with feathers and woollen
tufts, give these lanes, which are nearly always up-hill and
sometimes intersected with steps, a peculiar appearance which
has a certain charm about it, and which compensates--nay, more
than compensates for their want of regularity, by the novel and
unlooked-for things you see.

Victor Hugo, in his charming "Orientale," says of Granada,--

      "Elle peint ses maisons de plus riches couleurs."

This is perfectly true. The houses of persons at all well off are
painted outside in the most fantastic manner with imitations of
architectural embellishments, sham cameos on grey grounds, and
false bas-reliefs. You have before you a medley of mouldings,
modillions, piers, urn-like vessels, volutes, medallions ornamented
with rose-coloured tufts, ovoloes, bits of embroidery, pot-bellied
cupids supporting all sorts of allegorical figures, on apple-green,
bright flesh-colour, or fawn-tinted backgrounds, all which, high
art tells us, argues bad taste carried to its utmost limits. At
first, you have some difficulty to bring yourself to look upon
these illuminated façades as real dwelling-houses. You fancy you
are walking among the scenery of a theatre. We had already seen
houses illuminated in this manner at Toledo, but they are very much
behind those of Granada in the extravagance of their decorations
and the strangeness of their colours. As for myself, I do not
dislike this fashion, which pleases the sight and forms a happy
contrast with the chalky colour of the whitewashed walls.

We just now mentioned the adoption by the upper classes of the
French style of dress; but the man of the people does not, luckily,
study Parisian fashions. He has still kept the pointed hat with
a velvet brim, adorned with silk tassels, or the one of stunted
form with a wide flap, like a turban, the jacket ornamented at the
elbows, the cuffs, and the collar, with embroidery, and pieces
of cloth of all colours, and which vaguely reminds you of the
Turkish jackets, the red or yellow sash, the breeches furnished
with filigrane buttons, or with small coins soldered to a shank,
with the leather gaiters open up the side to let the leg be seen;
the whole being more striking, more gorgeous, more flowered, more
dazzling, more loaded with tinsel and gewgaws, than the costume
of any other province. You see also many other costumes known by
the name of _vestido de cazador_ (hunter's dress), made of Cordova
leather and blue or green velvet, and ornamented with aiglets. It
is considered highly fashionable to carry a cane (vara) or white
stick, four feet long, slit up at the end, and on which the person
carrying it leans negligently when he stops to speak to any one.
No _majo_ possessing the least respect for himself would ever dare
appear in public without a _vara_. Two handkerchiefs, with their
ends hanging out of the jacket pockets, a long _navaja_ stuck in
the sash, not in front, but in the middle of the back, constitute
the height of elegance for these coxcombs of the people.

This costume so pleased my fancy, that my first care was to order
one. They took me to Don Juan Zafata, a person who had a great
reputation for national costumes, and who had as great a hatred
for black dress-coats and frock-coats as I have. Seeing that my
antipathy coincided with his own, he gave free course to his
sorrow, and poured into my breast his elegies on the decline of
art. With grief that found an echo in myself did he remind me of
the happy time when foreigners dressed in the French fashion would
have been hooted through the streets and pelted with orange-peel;
when the _toreadores_ wore jackets embroidered with gold and
silver, which were worth more than five hundred _piécettes_; and
when the young men of good family had trimmings and aiglets of an
enormous price. "Alas! sir, the English are the only persons who
buy Spanish clothes now," said he, as he finished taking my measure.

This Señor Zapata was, with respect to his clothes, something
like Cardillac with respect to his jewels. He was always sorely
grieved at having to give them up to his customers. When he
came to try on my suit, he was so delighted with the splendid
appearance of the flower-pot he had embroidered in the middle
of the back on the brown cloth ground, that he broke out into
exclamations of the most frantic joy, and began to commit all sorts
of extravagances. But all at once the thought that he should have
to leave this chef-d'œuvre in my hands put a stop to his hilarity,
and his features suddenly became overcast. Under the pretext of
making I know not what alteration, he wrapped the garment up in
a handkerchief, gave it to his apprentice, for a Spanish tailor
would think himself dishonoured if he carried his own parcels,
and casting at me a fierce, ironical look, hurried away as if a
thousand demons were pursuing him. The next day he came back alone,
and, taking from a leathern purse the money I had paid him, he told
me that it grieved him so much to part with his jacket, that he
preferred to return me my duros. It was only after I had observed
that this costume would give the Parisians a great idea of his
talent, and create him a reputation in Paris, that he consented to
let me have it.

The women have had the good taste not to discard the mantilla,
the most delicious style of head-dress for the display of Spanish
features; gracefully enveloped in their black lace, they go about
the streets and public walks, with nothing on their heads but the
mantilla, and a red pink at each temple, and glide along the walls,
while skilfully using their fans, with the most incomparable grace
and agility. A bonnet is a rare thing in Granada. The women of
fashion have, it is true, some jonquil, or poppy-coloured thing,
carefully put away in a bonnet-box, to be kept for grand occasions;
but such occasions, thank Heaven, are very rare, and the horrible
bonnets only see the light on the saint's day of the Queen, or at
the solemn sittings of the Lyceum. May our fashions never invade
the city of the caliphs, and may we never see realized the terrible
menace contained in the two words, "Modista Francesa," painted
in black at the entrance of a public square! Persons of a grave
character will, doubtless, think us very futile, and ridicule our
grief about the extinction of the picturesque, but then we are of
opinion, that patent leather boots and mackintoshes contribute very
little to civilization, and we even look upon civilization itself
as a thing far from desirable. It is a melancholy spectacle for a
poet, an artist, and a philosopher, to see both form and colour
disappear from the world, lines become confused, tints confounded,
and the most disheartening uniformity invade everything, under the
pretext of I know not what progress. When all things are alike,
there will be no further need for travelling, but, by a happy
coincidence, that will be the very time when railways will be in
full activity. What will be the good of making a long journey at
the rate of ten leagues an hour, to go and look at a number of
streets lighted, like the Rue de la Paix, with gas, and full of
well-to-do citizens? We do not think that it was for this that
Nature modelled each country in a different shape, supplied it
with plants peculiar to itself, and peopled the world with races
dissimilar to each other in conformation, colour, and language.
It is giving a bad interpretation to the meaning for which the
world was created, to wish it to force the same livery on men
of every climate; and yet this is one of the errors of European
civilization: a coat with long narrow tails makes a man look
much uglier than any other costume would, and keeps him quite as
barbarous. The poor Turks of Sultan Mahmoud have certainly cut a
fine figure since the reform made in their old Asiatic costume, and
the progress of knowledge among them has been prodigious indeed!

In order to reach the parade, you must go along the Carrera del
Darro and cross the Plaza del Teatro, where there is a funereal
column raised to the memory of Joaquin Maïquez by Julian Romea,
Matilda Diez, and other dramatic _artistes_: the façade of the
Arsenal, a structure of bad taste, besmeared with yellow and
decorated with statues of grenadiers painted mouse-grey, looks on
the square.

The Alameda of Granada is certainly one of the most agreeable
places in the world; it is called the _Saloon_, a singular name
for a parade; fancy a long walk furnished with several rows of
trees of a verdancy unique in Spain, and terminating at each end
by a monumental fountain, the top basins of which support on
their shoulders aquatic gods, curious by their deformity, and
delightfully barbarous. These fountains, contrary to the custom of
such constructions, throw out the water in large sheets, which,
evaporating in the form of fine rain and mist, spreads around
a most delicious coolness. In the side walks run streams of
crystalline transparency, encased in beds of different coloured
pebbles. A large parterre, ornamented with jets of water and
crowded with shrubs and flowers, myrtles, roses, jasmines, with all
the riches, in fact, of the Granadian Flora, occupies the space
between the Saloon and the Xenil, and stretches as far as the
bridge constructed by General Sebastiani at the time of the French
invasion. The Xenil runs from the Sierra Neveda in its marble bed,
through woods of laurel of the most incomparable beauty. Glass and
crystal form comparisons too opaque and too thick to give a true
idea of the purity of the water which, but the evening before,
was still flowing in sheets of silver on the white shoulders of
the Sierra Neveda. It is like a torrent of diamonds in a state of
fusion.

The fashionable world of Granada assemble on the Saloon, between
seven and eight in the evening; the carriages follow along the
road, but they are for the most part empty, as the Spaniards are
very fond of walking, and in spite of their pride, deign to use
their own legs. Nothing can be more charming than to see the young
women and young girls pass to and fro in little groups, dressed
in their mantillas, with their arms bare, real flowers in their
hair, satin shoes on their feet, and a fan in their hand, followed
at some distance by their friends and sweethearts, for, as we
have already said, when speaking of the Prado at Madrid, it is
not customary in Spain for the women to take the arms of the men.
This habit of walking alone gives them a bold, elegant, and free
deportment unknown to our women, who are always hanging to some arm
or other. As artists say, they carry themselves beautifully. This
perpetual separation of the men from the women, at least in public,
already smacks of the East.

A sight of which the people of the North can have no idea, is
the Alameda of Granada at sunset. The Sierra Neveda, whose
denticulated ridges face the city on this side, assumes the most
unimaginable hues. Its whole steep and rugged flank and all its
peaks, struck by the light, become of a rose-colour, dazzling
to behold; ideal, fabulous, shot with silver, and streaked with
iris and opal-like reflections, which would make the freshest
tints on the artist's palette appear thick and dirty: the hues
of mother-of-pearl, the transparency of the ruby, and veins of
agate and advanturine that would defy all the fairy jewellery of
the "Thousand-and-one Nights," are to be seen there. The hollows,
crevices, anfractuosities, and all the places which the rays of the
setting sun cannot reach are of a blue colour which vies with the
azure of the sky and sea, with the lapis-lazuli and the sapphire;
this contrast of hue between light and shade produces a wonderful
effect: the mountain seems to have put on an immense robe of shot
silk spangled and bordered with silver; little by little, the
bright colours disappear and turn to violet mezzotintos, darkness
invades the lower ridges, the light withdraws towards the summit,
and all the plain has long since been in obscurity, while the
silver diadem of the Sierra still shines out in the serenity of the
sky, beneath the parting kiss sent it by the sun.

The company take a turn or two more and then disperse, some going
to take sherbet or _agraz_ at the _café_ of Don Pedro Hurtado,
where you get the best ice in Granada, and others to the _tertulia_
at their friends' and acquaintances' houses.

This is the gayest and most lively part of the day at Granada. The
shops of the _aguadores_ and sellers of ices in the open street are
illuminated by a multitude of lamps and lanterns; the street lamps
and the lights placed before the images of the madonnas vie in
splendour and number with the stars, and this is saying something:
if it happens to be moonlight, you can easily see to read the most
microscopical print. The light is blue instead of being yellow, and
that is all.

Thanks to the lady who had saved me from dying of hunger in the
diligence, and who introduced us to several of her friends, we were
soon well known in Granada. We led a delicious life there. It would
be impossible to receive a more cordial, frank, and amiable welcome
than we did; at the end of five or six days we were on the most
intimate terms with every one, and according to the Spanish custom,
we were always called by our Christian names; at Granada I was Don
Teofilo, my friend gloried in the appellation of Don Eugenio, and
we were both at liberty to designate the ladies and young girls
of the houses in which we were received, by the familiar names of
Carmen, Teresa, Gala, &c.; this familiarity clashes in no way with
the most polished manners and the most respectful attention.

We went to _tertulia_ every evening from eight o'clock till twelve;
to-day at one house, to-morrow at another. The _tertulia_ is held
in the _patio_, surrounded by alabaster columns and ornamented by a
jet of water, the basin of which is encircled with pots of flowers
and boxes of shrubs, down whose leaves the water falls in large
beads. Five or six lamps are hung up along the walls: sofas, and
straw or cane-bottomed chairs furnish the galleries, with here and
there a guitar. The piano occupies one corner, and in another stand
card-tables. Every one, on entering, goes to pay his compliments
to the mistress and master of the house, who never fail to offer
you a cup of chocolate, that good taste tells you to refuse, and
a cigarette, which is sometimes accepted. When this duty is over,
you retire to a corner of the _patio_, and join the group which
has most attraction for you. The parents and old people play at
_trecillo_, the young men talk with the young girls, recite the
octaves and the decastichs they have composed during the day,
and are scolded and forced to do penance for the crimes they may
have committed the evening before; such, for instance, as having
danced too often with a pretty cousin, or cast too ardent a glance
towards a proscribed balcony, with numerous other peccadilloes.
If, on the contrary, they have been very good, they are rewarded
for the rose they have brought with the pink in the young girls'
breast or hair, and their squeeze of the hand is replied to by a
gentle look and a slight pressure of the fingers, when all go up
into the balcony to listen to the Retreat beaten by the troops.
Love seems to be the sole business of Granada. You have only to
speak two or three times to a young girl, and the entire city
immediately declare you to be _novio_ and _novia_,--that is,
affianced, and make a thousand innocent jokes about the passion
they have invented for you; which jokes, innocent though they be,
do not fail, however, to make you somewhat uneasy, by bringing
visions of conjugal life before your eyes. All this gallantry is,
however, more apparent than real; in spite of languishing glances,
burning looks, tender or impassioned conversations, pretty little
shortenings of your name, and the _querido_ (beloved) with which
it is preceded, you must not conceive any too flattering ideas. A
Frenchman to whom a woman of the world were to say the quarter of
what a young Granadian girl says to one of her numerous novios,
without the least importance being attached to it, would think
himself already in Paradise; but he would soon find his mistake,
for if he became too bold, he would be instantly called to order,
and summoned to state his matrimonial intentions before the nearest
relatives. This honest liberty of language, so far removed from
the forced and artificial manners of the nations of the north, is
preferable to hypocrisy of speech, which always hides, at bottom,
some coarse thought or other. At Granada, to pay attentions to a
married woman seems quite extraordinary; while nothing appears more
natural there than to pay court to a young girl. It is the contrary
in France: no one ever addresses, there, a word to young, unmarried
ladies, and this is what so often renders marriages unhappy. In
Spain, a _novio_ sees his _novia_ two or three times a day, speaks
to her without witnesses, accompanies her in her walks, and comes
to talk with her in the evening through the bars of the balcony,
or the window of the ground-floor. He thus has time to become
acquainted with her, to study her character, and does not buy, as
the saying is, a pig in a poke.

When the conversation flags, one of the gentlemen takes down a
guitar, and, scratching the cords with his nails and keeping
time with the palm of his hand on the centre of the instrument,
begins to sing some gay Andalusian song or some comic couplet,
interspersed with _Ay!_ and _Ola!_ curiously modulated and
productive of a very singular effect. Then a lady sits down to
the piano, and plays a _morceau_ from Bellini, who appears to
be the favourite maestro of the Spaniards, or sings a romance
of Breton de los Herreros, the great versifier of Madrid. The
evening is terminated by a little extempore ball, at which, alas!
they dance neither jota, nor fandango, nor bolero, these dances
being abandoned to peasants, servants, and gipsies; but they dance
quadrilles, rigadoons, and sometimes they waltz. At our request,
however, two young ladies of the house volunteered to execute the
bolero one evening; but, before they commenced, they took care to
close the door and windows of the _patio_, which are generally left
open, so afraid were they of being accused of bad taste and local
colouring. In general, the Spaniards grow angry on being spoken
to of cachuchas, castanets, majos, manolas, monks, smugglers, and
bull-fights, though they have, in reality, a great liking for
all these things, so truly national and characteristic. They ask
you, with an air of apparent vexation, if you do not think that
they are as far advanced in civilization as yourself? To such an
extent has the deplorable mania of imitating everything, French or
English, penetrated everywhere! At present, Spain represents the
Voltaire-Touquet system and the _Constitutionnel_ of 1825; that is,
it is hostile to all colouring and to all poetry. Be it remembered,
however, that we are only speaking of the self-styled enlightened
class inhabiting the cities.

As soon as the quadrilles are over, you take your leave by saying,
"_A los pies de vd._" to the lady of the house, and "_Beso à vd. la
mano_" to her husband; to which they reply, "_Buenas noches_," and
"_Beso à vd. la suya_:" and then again on the threshold, as a last
adieu, "_Hasta mañana_" (till to-morrow); which is an invitation
to return. In spite of their familiar ways, the people of even
the lower classes, the peasants and vagrants, make use towards
one another of the most exquisite urbanity, which forms a strong
contrast with the uncouthness of our own rabble. It is true that
a stab might be the result of an offensive expression, and this
is certainly one way of making all interlocutors use a good deal
of circumspection. It is worthy of remark that French politeness,
formerly proverbial, has disappeared since swords have ceased to be
worn. The laws against duelling will end by making us the rudest
nation in the world.

On returning home, you meet, under the windows and balconies,
numbers of young gallants enveloped in their hooded cloaks, and
staying there to _pelar la paba_ (pluck the turkey), that is,
to talk with their _novias_ through the bars. These nocturnal
conversations often last till two or three o'clock in the morning,
which is nothing astonishing, since the Spaniards spend a part of
the day in sleep. You sometimes tumble also on a serenade composed
of three or four musicians, but more generally of the sighing swain
only, who sings couplets as he accompanies himself on the guitar,
with his _sombrero_ drawn over his eyes, and his feet resting
on a stone or a step. Formerly two serenades in the same street
would not have been tolerated. The first comer claimed the right
of remaining there alone, and forbade every other guitar, except
his own, to tinkle in silence of the night. Such pretensions were
maintained at the point of the sword, or by the knife, unless
the patrol happened to be passing. In this case the two rivals
coalesced, in order to charge the patrol, with the understanding
that they were to renew their own private combat by and by. The
susceptibility of serenaders has greatly diminished, and every one
can at present tranquilly _rascar el jamon_ (scrape the ham) under
the window of his mistress.

If the night is dark you must take care not to put your foot into
the stomach of some honourable hidalgo, rolled up in his mantle,
which serves him for garment, bed, and house. During the summer
nights the granite steps of the theatre are covered with a mass of
blackguards who have no other place to go to. Each of them has his
particular step, which serves as his apartment, where he is always
sure to be found. They sleep there under the blue vault of heaven,
with the stars for night lights, with no bugs to annoy them, and
defy the sting of the mosquito by the coriaceous nature of their
tanned skin, which is bronzed by the fiery sun of Andalusia, and
certainly quite as dark as that of the darkest mulattoes.

The following is, without much variation, the life we led. The
morning was devoted to visiting different parts of the city, to a
walk to the Alhambra or the Generalife; we then went, of necessity,
to call on the ladies at whose houses we had passed the previous
evening. When we called but twice a day they told us we were
ungrateful, and received us with so much kindness that we came
to the conclusion that we really were fierce savage beings, and
extremely negligent.

Our passion for the Alhambra was such that, not satisfied with
visiting it every day, we were desirous of altogether taking up
our abode there; not, however, in the neighbouring houses, which
are let at very high prices to the English, but in the palace
itself; and, thanks to the interest of our Granadian friends,
the authorities, without giving us formal permission, promised
not to perceive us. We remained there four days and four nights,
which constituted, without any doubt, the happiest moments of my
existence.

In order to reach the Alhambra, we will pass, if you please,
through the square of the Vivarambla, where Gazal, the valiant
Moor, used to hunt the bull, and where the houses, with their
wooden balconies and _miradores_, present a vague appearance of so
many hen-coops. The fish-market occupies one corner of the square,
the middle of which forms an open space, surrounded with stone
seats, peopled with money-changers, vendors of alcarrazas, earthen
pots, water melons, mercery, ballads, knives, chaplets, and other
little articles that can be sold in the open air. The Zacatin,
which has preserved its picturesque name, connects the Vivarambla
with the Plaza Nueva. It is in this street, bordered by lateral
lanes, and covered with canvass _tendidos_, that all the commerce
of Granada moves and buzzes; hatters, tailors, and shoemakers,
lacemen and cloth merchants, occupy nearly all the shops, which
possess as yet nothing of the improvements of modern art, and
remind you of the old pillars of the Paris markets.

The Zacatin is always crowded. Now you meet a group of students
on a tour from Salamanca, playing the guitar, the tambourine,
castanets, and triangle, while they sing couplets full of fun and
animation; then again your eye encounters a gang of gipsy women,
with their blue flounced dresses studded with stars, their long
yellow shawls, their hair in disorder, and their necks encircled
with big coral or amber necklaces, or a file of donkeys loaded with
enormous jars, and driven by a peasant from the Vega, as sun-burnt
as an African.

The Zacatin leads into the Plaza Nueva, one side of which is
taken up by the splendid palace of the Chancellor, remarkable
for its columns of rustic order and the severe richness of its
architecture. As soon as you have crossed the place, you begin
to ascend the Calle de los Gomeres, at the end of which you find
yourself on the limits of the jurisdiction of the Alhambra, and
face to face with the Puerta de Granada, named Bib Leuxar by the
Moors, with the Vermilion Towers on its right, built, as the
learned world declares, on Phœnician sub-structures, and inhabited
at present by basket-makers and potters.

Before proceeding further, we ought to warn our readers, who may
perhaps think our descriptions, though scrupulously exact, beneath
the idea they have formed of the Alhambra, that this palace and
fortress of the ancient Moorish kings is very far from presenting
the appearance lent to it by the imagination. We expected to see
terrace superposed on terrace, open-worked minarets, and rows
of boundless colonnades. But nothing of all this really exists:
outside, there are only to be seen large massive towers of the
colour of bricks or toasted bread, built at different epochs by
Arabian princes; and within, all you see is a suite of chambers and
galleries, decorated with extreme delicacy, but with nothing grand
about them. Having made these remarks, we will continue our route.

After having passed the Puerta de Granada, you find yourself
within the bounds of the fortress and under the jurisdiction of a
special governor. There are two routes marked out in a wood of
lofty trees. Let us take the one to the left, which leads to the
fountain of Charles the Fifth: it is the steeper of the two, but
then it is the shorter and the more picturesque. Water flows along
rapidly in small trenches paved with kelp, and spreads around the
bottom of the trees, which nearly all belong to species peculiar
to the north, and the verdancy of which is of such moisture as to
be truly delicious at so short a distance from Africa. The noise
of the murmuring water joins itself to the hoarse hum of a hundred
thousand grasshoppers or crickets, whose music never ceases, and
which forcibly reminds you, in spite of the coolness of the place,
of southern and torrid climes. Water springs forth everywhere; from
beneath the trunks of the trees and through the cracks in the old
walls. The hotter it is, the more abundant are the springs, for
it is the snow which supplies them. This mixture of water, snow,
and fire, renders the Granadian climate unparalleled throughout
the world, and makes Granada a real terrestrial paradise; without
being Moors, we might well have had applied to us, when we appeared
oppressed by deep melancholy, the Arabian saying--"He is thinking
of Granada."

At the end of the road, which continues to rise, you meet a large
monumental fountain, which serves as a shouldering-piece, raised
to the memory of the emperor Charles the Fifth: it is covered with
numerous devices, coats of arms, names of victories, imperial
eagles, mythological medallions, is of a heavy imposing richness,
and in the Romanic-German style. Two shields, bearing the arms of
the house of Mondejar, announce that Don Luis de Mendoza, marquis
of this title, raised the monument in honour of the red-bearded
Cæsar. This fountain, which is solidly constructed, supports the
ascent which leads to the Gate of Justice, through which you enter
the Alhambra proper.

The Gate of Justice was built by King Yusef Abul Hagiag, about
the year of our Lord 1348: it owes its name to the custom the
Mussulmans have of rendering justice on the threshold of their
palaces; this custom possesses the advantage of being very
majestic, and of allowing no one to enter the inner courts; for
the maxim of Monsieur Royer-Collard, which says that "Private life
ought to be walled in," was invented ages ago by the inhabitants of
the East--that country of the sun, whence all light and wisdom come.

The name of tower might be given more properly than that of gate to
this construction of King Yusef Abul Hagiag; for it is in reality a
large square tower, rather high, and through which there is a large
hollow arch in the form of a heart, to which a hieroglyphic key and
hand, cut in two separate stones, impart a stern and cabalistic
air. The key is a symbol held in great veneration by the Arabs, on
account of a verse in the Koran beginning with the words "He has
opened," and of several other hermetic significations; the hand is
destined to destroy the influence of the Evil Eye, the _jettatura_,
like the little coral hands which they wear at Naples as pins or
watch appendages, to avert the power of sinister looks. There was
an ancient prediction which asserted that Granada would never be
taken until the hand had seized the key: it must be owned, however,
to the shame of the prophet, that the two hieroglyphics are still
in the same places; and that Boabdil, _el rey chico_, as he was
called on account of his small stature, uttered outside the walls
of conquered Granada the historical groan, _suspiro del Moro_,
which has given its name to a rock of the Sierra de Elvira.

This massive and embattled tower, glazed with orange and red on
a stiff sky-blue ground, and having behind it a whole abyss of
vegetation, with the city built on a precipice, while beyond it are
long ranges of mountains streaked with a thousand hues, like those
of African porphyry, forms a truly majestic and splendid entrance
to the Arabian palace. Under the gate is a guard-house, and poor
ragged soldiers now take their siesta in the same place where the
caliphs, seated on sofas of gold brocade, with their black eyes
motionless in their marble faces and their hands buried in the
folds of their silky beards, listened with a thoughtful and solemn
air to the complaints of the believers. An altar, surmounted by an
image of the Virgin, stands against the wall, as if to sanctify at
the very entrance this ancient abode of the worshippers of Mahomet.

When you have passed through the gate, you enter a vast place
called the _Plaza de las Algives_, in the middle of which is a
well whose curb is surrounded by a sort of wooden shed covered
with esparto-work, where you can go, for a _cuarto_, and drink
large glasses of water as clear as a diamond, as cold as ice, and
of the most delicious taste. The towers of Quebrada, the Homenaga,
the Armeria, and of the Vela, whose bell announces the time at
which the water is distributed; and stone parapets on which you
can lean, in order to admire the wonderful view that stretches
itself before you, surround one side of the place; the other side
is occupied by the palace of Charles the Fifth, an immense monument
of the Renaissance which would be admired anywhere else, but which
is wished anywhere but here when you think that it covers a space
once belonging to a part of the Alhambra, that was pulled down
on purpose to make room for this heavy mass. This _alcazar_ was
designed, however, by Alonzo Berruguete: the trophies, bas-reliefs,
and medallions on its façade have been executed with patience
by a bold and spirited hand: the circular court with its marble
columns, where the bull-fights, doubtless, took place, is certainly
a magnificent piece of architecture, but _non erat hic locus_.

[Illustration: WELL DE LAS ALGIVES, ALHAMBRA.]

You enter the Alhambra by a corridor running through an angle of
the palace of Charles the Fifth, and after a few windings you
arrive at a large court indifferently known by the names of _Patio
de los Arrayanes_ (Court of Myrtles), of the _Alberca_ (of the
Reservoir), or of the _Mezouar_, an Arabian word signifying a bath
for women.

On coming from these obscure passages into this large space
inundated with light, you feel an effect similar to that produced
by a diorama. It appears to you that an enchanter's wand has
carried you to the East of four or five centuries back. Time,
which changes all things in its progress, has in no way modified
the aspect of these places, where the apparition of one of the old
Moorish sultans, and of Tarfe the Moor in his white cloak, would
not cause the least surprise.

In the middle of the court there is a large reservoir three or
four feet deep, in the form of a parallelogram, bordered by two
large beds of myrtles and shrubs, and terminated at each end by a
sort of gallery, with slender columns supporting Moorish arches
of very delicate workmanship. Fountains, the over-abundant water
of which is conducted from the basins to the reservoir through a
marble gutter, are placed under each gallery, and complete the
symmetry of the decorations. To the left are the archives, and the
chamber where, to the shame of the Granadians, is stowed away,
among all sorts of rubbish, the magnificent vase of the Alhambra,
a monument of inestimable rareness, nearly four feet in height,
covered with ornaments and inscriptions, and fitted in itself to
form the glory of a museum, but which Spanish heedlessness allows
to lie uncared-for in an ignoble hole. One of the wings which form
the handles was broken off a little time back. On this side also
are passages leading to an ancient mosque, converted into a church
under the protection of St. Mary of the Alhambra, at the time of
the conquest. To the right are the rooms of the attendants, where
the head of some dark Andalusian servantmaid, looking out of a
narrow Moorish casement, now and then produces a very pleasing
Oriental effect. At the bottom, above the ugly roof of round tiles,
which have replaced the gilt tiles and cedar-beams of the Arabian
roof, rises majestically the tower of Comares, the embattlements of
which boldly shoot forth their vermilion denticulations into the
beautifully limpid vault of heaven. This tower contains the Hall of
Ambassadors, and communicates with the _Patio de los Arrayanes_ by
a sort of antechamber called the _Barca_, on account of its form.

The antechamber of the Hall of Ambassadors is worthy of
its purpose; the nobleness of its arcades, the variety and
interweavings of its arabesques, the mosaic-work of its walls,
the delicacy of its stuccoed roof, furrowed like the stalactite
ceiling of a grotto, painted blue, green, and yellow, of which
there are still some traces left, form a whole of the most charming
originality and strangeness.

On each side of the door leading to the Hall of Ambassadors, in the
jamb itself of the arcade, and above the coating of varnished glass
which decorates the lower part of the walls, and which is divided
into triangles of glaring colours, are two white marble niches,
looking like little chapels, and sculptured in a most delicate
manner. It was here that the ancient Moors used to leave their
slippers before entering, as a mark of deference, just as we take
off our hat in places we respect.

The Hall of Ambassadors, one of the largest of the Alhambra,
occupies all the interior of the tower of Comares. The roof, which
is cedar, is full of those mathematical combinations so familiar to
Arabian architects: all the pieces are placed so that their salient
or re-entering angles form a great variety of designs; the walls
disappear beneath a network of ornaments so close together, and so
inextricably interwoven, that they can be compared to nothing more
fitly than to several pieces of guipure placed one over another.
Gothic architecture, with its stone lacework, and its open-worked
roses, is nothing to this. Fish-knives, and paper embroidery
executed with a fly-press, like that which confectioners use to
cover their bonbons with, can alone give you an idea of it. One of
the characteristics of the Moorish style is that it offers very
few projections or profiles. All this ornamental work is executed
on smooth surfaces, and scarcely ever projects more than four or
five inches; it resembles a kind of tapestry worked on the wall
itself. It has, too, one very distinguishing feature, and this is,
the employment of writing as a means of decoration. It is true
that Arabian writing, with its mysterious forms and distortions,
is admirably fitted for this use. The inscriptions, which are
nearly always _suras_ of the Koran, or eulogiums on the different
princes who have built and decorated the halls, are placed along
the friezes, on the jambs of the doors, and round the arches of
the windows, and are interspersed with flowers, foliage, net-work,
and all the riches of Arabian calligraphy. Those in the Hall of
Ambassadors signify "Glory to God, power and riches to believers;"
or they sing the praises of Abu Nazar, who, "if he had been taken
alive into heaven, would have made the brightness of the stars and
planets pale"--a hyperbolical assertion, which seems to us rather
too oriental. Other rows of inscriptions are filled with eulogiums
of Abi Abd Allah, another sultan, who helped to build this part of
the palace. The windows are loaded with pieces of poetry in honour
of the limpidness of the waters of the reservoir, of the blooming
condition of the shrubs, and of the perfume of the flowers that
ornament the yard of the Mezouar, which is seen from the Hall of
Ambassadors through the door and columns of the gallery.

The loopholes, with their interior balconies at a great height from
the ground, and the roof of wood-work without any other ornaments
but the zigzags and the cross-work formed by the placing of the
timber, give the Hall of Ambassadors a severer aspect than the
other halls of the palace have, but which is more in harmony with
the purpose it was intended for. From the window at the back there
is a beautiful view over the ravine of the Darro.

[Illustration: EXTERIOR OF THE ALHAMBRA.]

Now that we have given this description, we think it our duty to
destroy another illusion. All these magnificent things are made
neither of marble nor of alabaster, nor even of stone, but simply
of plaster! This interferes very much with the ideas of fairy
splendour that the name alone of the Alhambra creates in the most
positive imaginations; but it is true, for all that. With the
exception of the columns, which are nearly all made of a single
piece, and which are hardly ever more than from six to eight feet
in height, of a few flag-stones, of the smaller basins of the
fountains, and of the little chapels where the slippers used to be
left, there has not been a single bit of marble employed in the
construction of the Alhambra. The same thing may be said of the
Generalife: the Arabs surpassed all other nations in the art of
moulding, hardening, and carving plaster, which acquired in their
hands the firmness of stucco, without having its disagreeable shiny
appearance.

The greater part of these ornaments were made in casts, so that
they could be reproduced without any great trouble as often as
the symmetry of the place required it. Nothing would be easier
than to reproduce an exact likeness of any hall of the Alhambra;
to do this, it would suffice to take casts of all the ornaments
contained in it. Two arcades of the Hall of Justice, which had
fallen down, have been reconstructed by some Granadian workmen, in
a manner which leaves nothing to be desired. If we were anything of
a _millionaire_, one of our fancies would be to have a duplicate of
the Court of Lions in one of our parks.

On leaving the Hall of Ambassadors, you follow a passage of modern
structure, comparatively speaking, and you arrive at the _tocador_,
or dressing-room of the queen. This is a small pavilion situated
on the top of a tower, which formerly served the sultanas for an
oratory, whence you enjoy the sight of an admirable panorama. At
the entrance you perceive a slab of white marble, perforated with
small holes to allow the smoke of the perfumes that were burnt
beneath the floor to pass through. On the walls are still seen some
fantastic frescoes, executed by Bartholomew de Ragis, Alonzo Perez,
and Juan de la Fuente. On the frieze the ciphers of Isabella and
Philip V. are intertwined, one with another, together with groups
of Cupids. It is impossible to conceive anything more coquettish
or charming than this closet, suspended as it is, with its little
Moorish pillars, and its surbased arches, over an abyss of azure,
the bottom of which is studded with the house-tops of Granada,
and whither the breeze wafts the perfumes of the Generalife, that
enormous tuft of rose-bays blooming on the brow of the neighbouring
hills, and the plaintive cry of the peacocks walking on the
dismantled walls. How many hours have I not spent there, wrapped
in that serene melancholy so different from the melancholy of the
north, with one leg dangling over the precipice, and straining
my eyes in order to leave unexamined no form or contour of the
picture that lay before them, and which they will, doubtless,
never see again. No pen or pencil will ever be able to give a true
idea of that brilliancy, of that light, of that vividness of hues.
The most commonplace tones assume the appearance of jewels, and
everything is on the same scale. Towards the end of the day, when
the sun is oblique, the most inconceivable effects are produced:
the mountains sparkle like heaps of rubies, topazes and carbuncles;
dust, which looks like dust of gold, fills the intervals, and if,
as is often the case in summer, the labourers are burning stubble
in the plain, the smoke, while rising slowly towards the sky,
borrows the most magical reflections from the rays of the setting
sun. I am surprised that Spanish painters, have, in general, made
their pictures so dark, and have almost exclusively employed
themselves in imitating Caravaggio and the masters of the sombre
school. The pictures of Decamps and Marilhat, who only painted
views of Asia or Africa, give a truer idea of Spain than all the
pictures fetched, at a great expense, from the Peninsula.

We will traverse the garden of Lindaraja without stopping, for
it is nothing but an uncultivated piece of ground, strewed with
rubbish, and bristling with brushwood; we will therefore visit,
for an instant, the Bath-room of the Sultana, which is coated with
square pieces of mosaic-work of glazed clay, and bordered with
filigree-work that would make the most complicated madrepores
blush. A fountain is in the middle of the room, and two alcoves are
in the wall. It was here that the Moorish Sultanas used to come to
repose themselves on square pieces of golden cloth, after having
enjoyed the pleasure and luxury of an oriental bath. The galleries
or balconies, in which the singers and musicians used to be placed,
are still seen, and are at a height of about fifteen feet from the
ground. The baths themselves resemble large troughs, and each of
them is made out of one piece of white marble; they are placed in
little vaulted closets, lighted by open-worked stars or roses. For
fear of becoming irksome by repetition, we will not speak of the
Hall of Secrets, whose acoustic powers are productive of a very
curious effect, and the corners of whose walls are blackened by
the noses of those inquisitive persons who go and whisper, in one
corner, some impertinence that is faithfully carried to another;
nor of the Hall of the Nymphs, over the door of which is an
excellent bas-relief of Jupiter changed into a swan and caressing
Leda, and which said bas-relief is most extraordinarily free in
its composition, and very audacious in its execution; nor of the
apartments of Charles the Fifth, which are in a dreadful state
of devastation, and which possess nothing curious, with the
exception of their roofs, studded with the ambitious device of _Non
plus ultra_; but we will go direct to the Court of Lions, the most
curious and best preserved part of the Alhambra.

[Illustration: PAVILION OF THE COURT OF LIONS, ALHAMBRA.]

English engravings and the numerous drawings which have been
published of the Court of Lions convey but a very incomplete and
false idea of it: nearly all of them fail to give the proper
proportions, and, in consequence of the over-loading necessitated
by the fact of representing the infinite details of Arabian
architecture, suggest the idea of a monument of much greater
importance.

The Court of Lions is a hundred and twenty feet long, seventy-three
broad, while the galleries which surround it are not more than
twenty-two feet high. They are formed by a hundred and twenty-eight
columns of white marble placed in a symmetrical disorder of four
and four, and of three and three, together: these columns, the
capitals of which are full of work and still preserve traces of
gold and colour, support arches of extreme elegance and of quite a
unique shape.

On entering, the Hall of Justice, the roof of which is a monument
of art of the most inestimable rarity and worth, immediately
attracts your attention, as it forms the back of the parallelogram.
There you see the only Arabian pictures, perhaps, which have come
down to us. One of them represents the Court of Lions itself, with
the fountain, which is very apparent, but gilt: some personages,
whom the oldness of the painting does not allow you to distinguish
clearly, seem to be engaged in a joust or passage of arms.

The subject of the other appears to be a sort of divan where the
Moorish kings of Granada are assembled, and whose white burnous,
olive-coloured faces, red mouths, and mysteriously dark eyes, are
still easily discernible. These paintings, as is asserted, are
executed on prepared leather, pasted on cedar panels, and serve to
prove that the precept of the Koran which forbids the likenesses of
animated beings being taken was not always scrupulously observed by
the Moors, even if the twelve lions of the fountain were not there
to confirm this assertion.

To the left, halfway up the gallery, is the Hall of the Two
Sisters, which is the fellow to the Hall of the Abencerrages. This
name of _las Dos Hermanas_ is given it from two immense flagstones
of white Macael marble, equal in size and perfectly alike, which
form part of the pavement. The vaulted roof, or cupola, which the
Spaniards expressively call _media naranja_ (half an orange), is
a miracle of work and patience. It is like a honeycomb, or the
stalactites of a grotto, or the bunches of soap-bubbles which
children blow out through a straw. The myriads of little vaults,
of domes three or four feet high which grow out of one another,
crossing and intersecting each other's edges, seem rather the
effect of fortuitous crystallization than the work of a human
hand; the blue, red, and green in the hollows of the mouldings
are still nearly as bright as if they had only just been put on.
The walls, like those of the Hall of Ambassadors, are covered,
from the frieze to the height of a man, with stucco-work of the
most complicated and delicate description. The bottom of the walls
is coated with those square pieces of glazed clay of which the
black, yellow, and green angles, combined with the white ground,
form a mosaic-work. The middle of the apartment, according to
the invariable custom of the Arabs, whose habitations seem to be
nothing but large ornamented fountains, is occupied by a basin and
a jet of water. There are four fountains under the Gate of Justice,
a like number under the entrance-gate, and another in the Hall of
the Abencerrages, without counting the _Taza de los Leones_, which,
not satisfied with vomiting water through the mouths of its twelve
monsters, throws up another torrent towards the sky out of the cap
which surmounts it. All this water flows through small trenches
made in the flooring of the halls and the pavement of the courts,
to the foot of the Fountain of Lions, where it disappears in a
subterraneous conduit. This is certainly a kind of dwelling in
which you would never be annoyed by the dust, and it is a matter of
conjecture how these halls could be inhabited in the winter. The
large cedar doors were no doubt then shut, the marble floor was
perhaps covered with a thick carpet, and fires of fruit-stones and
odoriferous wood lighted in the _braseros_, and it was thus that
the return of the fine season was waited for, which is never long
in coming at Granada.

We will not describe the Hall of the Abencerrages, which is
almost similar to that of the Two Sisters, and contains nothing
particular, with the exception of its ancient door of wood arranged
in lozenges, which dates from the time of the Moors. At the Alcazar
of Seville there is another one made exactly in the same style.

The _Taza de los Leones_ enjoys, in Arabian poetry, a wonderful
reputation, and no terms of praise are thought too high for
these superb animals: I must own, however, that it would be
difficult to find anything less resembling lions than these
productions of African fancy; the paws are mere wedges, similar
to those bits of wood, of hardly any shape, which are used to
thrust into the bellies of paste-board dogs to make them keep
their equilibrium; the muzzles, streaked with transversal lines,
doubtless to represent the whiskers, are exactly like the snout of
a hippopotamus; and the eyes are designed in so primitive a manner,
that they remind you of the shapeless attempts of children.
Nevertheless, these twelve lions, if we look upon them not as
lions, but as chimeras, as a caprice in ornamenting, produce, with
the basins they support, a picturesque effect full of elegance,
which aids you to comprehend their reputation, and the praises
contained in the following Arabian inscription, of twenty-four
verses of twenty-two syllables each, engraved on the sides of
the basin into which the waters of the upper basin fall. We ask
our readers' pardon for the somewhat barbarous fidelity of the
translation:--

[Illustration: FOUNTAIN, COURT OF LIONS, ALHAMBRA.]

"O you who gaze on the lions fixed to their places! remark that
they only require life to be perfect. And you to whom this Alcazar
and this kingdom fall as an inheritance, take them from the noble
hands who have governed them, without displeasure and without
resistance. May God preserve you for the work which you come to
perform, and protect you for ever from the revenge of your enemy!
Honour and glory be yours. O Mohammed! our king, endowed with
great virtues, by the aid of which you have conquered all! May
God never permit this fine garden, the image of your virtues, to
have a rival that surpasses it! The substance which tints the
basin of the fountain is like mother-of-pearl beneath the clear
sparkling water; the flowing stream resembles melting silver, for
the limpidness of the water and the whiteness of the stone have no
equals; they might be likened unto a drop of transparent essence
on a face of alabaster. It would be difficult to follow its course.
Look at the water and look at the basin, and you will not be able
to distinguish whether it is the water that is motionless or the
marble that ripples. Like the prisoner of love, whose visage is
covered with vexation and fear by the look of the envious, so is
the jealous water indignant at the stone, and the stone envious of
the water. To this inexhaustible stream may be compared the hand of
our king, who is as liberal and as generous as the lion is valiant
and strong."

It was in the basin of the Fountain of Lions that the heads of
the thirty-six Abencerrages, whom the Zegris had drawn there by
stratagem, fell. The rest of the Abencerrages would have shared the
same fate, had it not been for the devotedness of a little page,
who ran at the risk of his life to warn them against entering the
fatal court. On having your attention directed to the bottom of the
basin, you perceive large reddish spots, an indelible accusation
left by the victims against their executioners. Unfortunately,
the erudite world declares that the Abencerrages and the Zegris
have never existed. With respect to this I am completely guided
by romances, popular traditions, and the novel of Monsieur de
Châteaubriand, and I firmly believe that these purple-looking marks
are blood and not rust.

We had established our head-quarters in the Court of Lions; our
furniture consisted of two mattresses, which we rolled up in a
corner in the day-time, of a brass lamp, of an earthenware jar, and
of a few bottles of sherry that we kept in a fountain to render
the wine cool. We slept one night in the Hall of the Two Sisters,
and the next in that of the Abencerrages, but it was not without
some slight fear, as I lay stretched on my cloak, that I looked
at the white rays of the moon, which appeared quite astonished at
crossing the yellow and flickering flame of a lamp, shoot through
the openings of the roof into the water of the basin and across the
shining ground.

The popular traditions collected by Washington Irving in his
"Tales of the Alhambra," now came into my mind; the stories of
the "Headless Horse" and of the "Hairy Phantom," gravely related
by Father Echeverria, appeared to me very probable, above all,
when the light was out. The likelihood of the legends appears
much greater in the night-time, when these dark places are filled
with uncertain reflections, which give to all objects of a vague
outline a fantastic appearance: doubt is the son of the day, faith
the daughter of the night; and what astonishes me is, that St.
Thomas believed in our Saviour after having felt his wound. I am
not sure that I myself did not see the Abencerrages walking about
in the moonlight, with their heads under their arms, along the
galleries; at all events, the shadows of the columns assumed forms
diabolically suspicious, and the breeze, as it passed through the
arcades, so resembled the breathing of a human being, that it made
you doubt.

One Sunday morning, about four or five o'clock, we felt ourselves,
while yet asleep, inundated on our mattresses with a fine and
soaking rain. This was owing to the conduits of the water-jets
having opened earlier than usual, in honour of a prince of Saxe
Coburg, who was come to view the Alhambra, and who, they said, was
to marry the young queen, as soon as she was of age.

We had scarcely time to rise and dress before the prince arrived,
with two or three persons of his suite. He was half mad with rage.
The keepers, in order to receive him in a proper manner, had fitted
to every fountain the most ridiculous pieces of mechanism and
hydraulic instruments imaginable. One of these inventions aimed,
by the means of a little white tin carriage and lead soldiers,
which were turned by the force of the water, at representing the
journey of the queen to Valencia. You may judge of the prince's
satisfaction at this ingenious and constitutional piece of
refinement. The _Fray Gerundio_, a satirical journal of Madrid,
persecuted this poor prince with marked animosity. It taxed him,
among other crimes, with haggling too much about the charges in his
hotel bills, and with having appeared at the theatre in the costume
of a _majo_, with a pointed hat on his head.

A party of Granadians came to spend the day at the Alhambra;
there were seven or eight young and pretty women, and five or six
cavaliers. They danced to the guitar, played at different games,
and sung in chorus, to a delightful air, a song by Fray Luis de
Leon, which has become very popular throughout Andalusia. As
the water-jets had stopped through having begun to shoot forth
their silver streams too early, and as the basins were dry, the
giddy young girls seated themselves in a round on the edge of the
alabaster basin of the Hall of the Two Sisters, so as to form a
kind of flower-basket, and, throwing back their pretty heads, again
took up simultaneously the burden of their song.

The Generalife is situated at a little distance from the Alhambra,
on a pass of the same mountain. Access is gained to it by a kind
of hollow road, that traverses the ravine of Los Molinos, which is
bordered with fig-trees, having enormous shiny leaves, with palm
oaks, pistachio-trees, laurels, and rock roses, of a remarkably
exuberant nature. The ground is composed of yellow sand teeming
with water, and of wonderful fecundity. Nothing is more delightful
than to follow this road, which appears as if it ran through a
virgin forest of America, to such an extent is it obstructed with
foliage and flowers, and such is the overwhelming perfume of the
aromatic plants you inhale there. Vines start through the cracks
of the crumbling walls, and from all their branches hang fantastic
runners, and leaves resembling Arabian ornaments in the beauty
of their form; the aloe opens its fan of azured blades, and the
orange-tree twists its knotty wood, and clings with its fang-like
roots to the rents in the steep sides of the ravine. Everything
here flourishes and blooms in luxuriant disorder, full of the most
charming effects of chance. A wandering jasmine-branch introduces a
white star among the scarlet flowers of the pomegranate-tree; and a
laurel shoots from one side of the road to the other to embrace a
cactus, in spite of its thorns. Nature, abandoned to herself, seems
to pride herself on her coquetry, and to wish to show how far even
the most exquisite and finished art always remains behind her.

After a quarter of an hour's walk, you come to the Generalife,
which is, so to say, nothing but the _casa de campo_, the
country-house of the Alhambra. The exterior of it, like that of all
oriental buildings, is very simple: large walls without windows,
and surmounted by a terrace with a gallery divided into arcades,
the whole being crowned with a small modern belvedere, constitute
its architecture. Of the Generalife nothing now remains but some
arcades, and some large panels of arabesques, unfortunately clogged
with layers of whitewash, which have been applied again and again
with all the obstinacy and despair of cleanliness. Little by little
have the delicate sculptures and the wonderful guilloches of these
remains become filled up, until they have at last disappeared. What
is at present nothing but a faintly-vermiculated wall, was formerly
open lace-work, as fine as those ivory leaves which the patience of
the Chinese carves for ladies' fans. The brush of the whitewasher
has caused more _chefs-d'œuvre_ to disappear than the scythe
of Time, if we may be allowed to make use of this mythological
expression. In a pretty well preserved hall is a suite of smoky
portraits of the kings of Spain, but the only merit they possess is
a chronological one.

The real charm of the Generalife consists in its gardens and its
waters. A canal, paved with marble, runs through the whole length
of the enclosure, and rolls its rapid and abundant waters beneath a
series of arcades of foliage, formed by twisting and curiously-cut
yews. Orange-trees and cypresses are planted on each side of
it. It was at the foot of one of these cypresses, which is of a
prodigious bulk, and which dates from the time of the Moors, that
the favourite of Boabdil, if we are to believe the legend, often
proved that bolts and bars are but slight guarantees for the virtue
of sultanas. There is one thing, at least, very certain, and that
is, that the yew is very thick, and very old.

The perspective is terminated by a porticoed gallery, ornamented
with jets of water and marble columns, like the _patio_ of myrtles
of the Alhambra. The canal suddenly makes a turn, and you then
enter some other places embellished with pieces of water, and
the walls of which still preserve traces of the frescoes of the
sixteenth century, representing rustic pieces of architecture,
and distant views. In the midst of one of the basins, a gigantic
rose-bay, of the most incomparable beauty and splendour, is seen
to bloom, like an immense flower-basket. At the time when I saw
it, it appeared like an explosion of flowers, or the bouquet of a
display of vegetable fireworks; its aspect, too, is so blooming and
luxuriant, so glaring, if we may be allowed the expression, that
it makes the hue of the most vermilion rose appear insipid. Its
lovely flowers, shot with all the ardour of desire high up into
the pure blue space of the heavens; and its noble-looking leaves,
shaped expressly by nature to form a crown for the glorious deeds
of heroism, and sprinkled by the spray of the water-jets, sparkled
like emeralds glittering in the sun. Never did anything inspire me
with a higher sentiment of the beautiful than this rose-bay of the
Generalife.

The water is brought to the gardens along a sort of steep
acclivity, bordered with little walls, forming on each side a
kind of parapet, that support trenches of large hollow tiles,
through which the water runs beneath the open sky with the most gay
and lively murmur in the world. On each footpace, well-supplied
water-jets burst forth from the middle of little basins, and
shoot their crystal aigrettes into the thick foliage of the wood
of laurels, the branches of which cross and recross one another
above them. The mountain streams with water on every side; at each
step a spring starts forth, and you continually hear at your side
the murmuring of some rivulet, turned out of its course, going to
supply some fountain with water, or to carry bloom and verdure to
the foot of a tree. The Arabs have carried the art of irrigation to
the highest point; their hydraulic works attest the most advanced
state of civilization; these works still exist; and it is to them
that Granada owes the reputation it has of being the Paradise of
Spain, and the fact of its enjoying eternal spring in an African
temperature. An arm of the Darro has been turned out of its course
by the Arabs, and carried for more than two leagues along the hill
of the Alhambra.

From the Belvedere of the Generalife you can plainly perceive
the configuration of the Alhambra, with its line of reddish,
half-demolished towers, and its remaining pieces of wall, which
rise and descend according to the undulations of the mountain. The
palace of Charles the Fifth, which is not seen from the side of the
city stamps its square and heavy mass, which the sun gilds with a
white reflection, on the damask-like sides of the Sierra Neveda,
whose white ridges stand out on the horizon in a singular manner.
The steeple of Saint Mary's marks its Christian outline above the
Moorish embattlements. A few cypresses thrust their mournful leaves
through the cracks of the walls, surrounded by all this light and
azure, like a melancholy thought in the midst of a joyful fête. The
slopes of the hill running down towards the Darro, and the ravine
of Los Molinos, disappear beneath an ocean of verdure. It is one of
the finest views that can well be imagined.

On the other side, as if to form a contrast with so much verdancy,
rises an uncultivated, scorched up, tawny mountain, tinged with
dashes of red and yellow ochre; this mountain is called _La Silla
del Moro_, on account of a few remains of some buildings on its
summit. It was there that king Boabdil used to view the Arabian
horsemen jousting in the Vega with the Christian knights. The
recollection of the Moors is still vivid at Granada. You would
think that they had quitted the city but yesterday, and, if we
may judge by what remains of them, it is really a pity that they
ever quitted it at all. What southern Spain requires is African
civilization, and not the civilization of Europe, which is not
suited to the heat of the climate or to the passions it inspires.
Constitutional mechanism can only agree with the temperate zones;
above a heat of eighty degrees charters melt or blow up.

As we have now done with the Alhambra and the Generalife, we will
traverse the ravine of the Darro, and take a look as we go along
the road leading to Monte Sagrado, at the dens of the _gitanos_,
who are pretty numerous at Granada. This road is made through the
hill of the Albaycin, which overhangs on one side. Gigantic Indian
fig-trees, and enormous nopals raise their prickly heads, of the
colour of verdigris, along its impoverished and white-coloured
slopes; under the roots of these large unctuous plants, which seem
to supply the place of chevaux-de-frise and spiked fences, are dug
in the living rock, the dwellings of the gipsies. The entrance to
these caverns is whitewashed; a light cord on which hangs a piece
of frayed-out tapestry, serves as a door. It is there that the
wild race swarms and multiplies; there, children, whose skins are
darker than Havannah cigars, play in a state of nudity before the
door, without any distinction as to sex, and roll themselves in
the dust while uttering sharp and guttural cries. The _gitanos_
are generally blacksmiths, mule-shearers, veterinary doctors,
and, above all, horse-dealers. They have a thousand receipts for
putting mettle and strength into the most broken-winded and limping
animals in the world: a _gitano_ would have made Rozinante gallop,
and Sancho's ass would have caracoled under their hands. Their real
trade, however, is that of stealing.

The _gitanas_ sell amulets, tell fortunes, and follow those
suspicious callings inherent to the women of their race. I saw very
few pretty ones, though their faces were remarkable both by their
type and character. Their swarthy complexion contrasts strongly
with the limpidness of their oriental eyes, the fire of which is
tempered by an indescribable and mysterious melancholy, only to be
compared to the look inspired by the recollection of a country that
is lost to us for ever, or of former grandeur. Their mouth, which
is rather thick and deeply coloured, reminds you of the blooming
nature of African mouths; the smallness of their forehead, and
the curved form of their nose, pronounce them to be of the same
origin with the _tzigones_ of Wallachia and Bohemia, and with
all the children of that fantastic people which traversed, under
the generic name of Egyptians, the whole of the society of the
Middle Ages, and the enigmatical filiation of which century upon
century has not been able to interrupt. Nearly all of them possess
so much natural majesty and freedom in their deportment, and are
so well and firmly set, that in spite of their rags, their dirt,