There is something almost life-like in the sweep of the tilted strata as the great cliff leaps above the summit of the poplars. It seems like the “station of the herald Mercury”;—arrested motion rather than repose;—a great wave petrified in the act of breaking, with spires and gables for the spray upon the crest. Beneath it curves the green and fertile valley, the “terrestrial Paradise” of the Monks of El Parral[46]; and the richness, brilliance and daring of the whole wonderful composition form a theme which is the despair both of pen and pencil alike.
The Alcázar, which is poised upon the extremity of the precipice, was gutted by fire some forty years ago, and is consequently largely a restoration; but it harmonises so admirably with the lines of nature that one hardly realises that it has not grown of its own accord. It has always been a royal stronghold, but never played any very important part in the{250} tumultuous drama of Spanish history; our friend the enemy, with commendable discretion, having commonly preferred to gather his laurels from some less inaccessible bough. It has, however, attained a minor celebrity through the carelessness of a nursemaid. This sounds but a threadbare method of achieving greatness; but the girl who accidentally dropped an heir-apparent out of a window of the Alcázar at Segóvia must be allowed to have fixed the standard at the very highest conceivable peg.
But the proudest day in its annals was that upon which Isabella the Catholic (newly apprised of the death of her brother King Henry) rode forth from its gateway to claim the homage of Castile and Leon. The moment was critical, for her succession was disputed; but Segóvia stood firmly in her favour,—a worthy birthplace for the worthiest era of Spain. The site seems designed for such a pageant; but it bore its own bane in the setting: for from the little convent of Sta Cruz, below the gateway of San Estéban, Torquemada was drawn to sway his nobler Queen.
Torquemada was Isabella’s evil genius—the demon who was to turn all her blessings to a curse. It is but just to him to admit that he was honest in{251} his wrong-headedness; that he believed as sincerely in the wickedness of an unauthorised conscience as in the righteousness of persecution, and would have gone to the stake himself in support of his tenets with as much resolution as any of his victims. It is the standing puzzle with such men how they could fail to recognise in their own spirit the condemnation of their own methods. Persecution they would have derided if applied to them by others. Why should they credit its efficacy when applied to others by them? And an even saner thought they might have gleaned from the old essayist[47]:—“When all is done it is an over-valuing of one’s convictions by them to cause that a man be burned alive.”
The cruelty for which we chiefly condemn them is a crime for which they were not wholly responsible. The age was cruel,—“the most cruel of all ages,” wrote the grave Montaigne:—and the Inquisition did but deal with heresy as treason was dealt with by the State. Its secrecy was its new and horrible feature and the one most deeply resented at the time.
For at first, even in Spain, the Inquisition was not tamely accepted; and some of the noblest{252} churchmen were loudest in its rebuke.[48] It sinned against the light. It was a thing of devils; an atrocity only to be paralleled by the witch-doctors of Ashanti and Benin.
These grisly reflections are the inevitable Nemesis of all romantic and chivalrous associations; but they seem as sadly out of place in this sunny Eden as the trail of the serpent in its prototype. Isabella was a generous patroness to the little convent, and her own mottoes and badges figure in its delicate carving. She needed no such piety to keep her memory green.
