Wanderings in Spain

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: —

"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, and their misery, they seem to be conscious of the antiquity and purity of their race, and ever to remember that it is free from all alloy, for these gipsies never marry but among themselves, and those children which are the offsprings of temporary unions are unmercifully cast out of the tribe. One of the pretensions of the gitanos is that of being good Castilians and good Catholics, but I think that, at bottom, they are, to some extent, Arabs and Mahometans; they deny this fact to the best of their power, from a remnant of fear for the Inquisition which no longer exists. A few deserted and half-ruined streets of the Albaycin are also inhabited by richer or less wandering gipsies. In one of these streets, we perceived a little girl, about eight years old, and entirely naked, dancing the zorongo on a painted paving stone. Her sister, whose features were wan and emaciated, and in whose citron-looking face sparkled eyes of fire, was crouched beside her on the ground, with a guitar, from the strings of which she drew forth a monotonous tinkle by running her thumb over them, and producing music not unsimilar to the husky squeak of the grasshopper. The mother, who was richly dressed, and whose neck was loaded with glass beads, beat time with the end of a blue velvet slipper, which she gazed on with great complacency. The wild attitude, strange accoutrement, and extraordinary colour of this group, would have made a subject for the pencil of Collot, or of Salvator Rosa.

Monte Sagrado, which contains the grottoes of the martyrs who were so miraculously discovered, offers nothing very interesting. It is a convent with a rather ordinary-looking church, beneath which the crypts are dug. These crypts have nothing about them capable of producing any deep impression. They are composed of a complication of small, straight, whitewashed corridors, from seven to eight feet high. In recesses made for the purpose, altars, dressed with more devotion than taste, have been raised. It is there that the shrines and bones of the holy personages are locked up behind the wire-work. I expected to see a subterraneous church, dark and mysterious, nay, even dreadful-looking, with low pillars, and a surbased roof, lighted by the uncertain reflection of a distant lamp, – something, in fact, similar to the ancient catacombs, and great was my surprise at the clean and tidy appearance of this whitewashed crypt, lighted by ventholes like those of a cellar. We somewhat superficial Catholics require something picturesque, in order to get imbued with religious feeling. The devout man thinks little about the effect of light and shade, or about the more or less learned proportions of architecture; he knows, however, that, beneath that altar of so mediocre a form, lie hidden the bones of the saint who died for the sake of the faith which he professes, and that suffices for him.