You enter, cross two or three rooms in which there remains little of the Moorish excepting the vaulted ceiling and the mosaics around the walls, and come out into a court where you stand speechless with wonder. A portico of very delicate arches extends along the four sides, supported by slender marble columns, joined two by two, and arches and walls and windows and doors are covered with carvings, mosaics, and arabesques most intricate and exquisite, here perforated like lace, there closely woven and elaborate like embroidered tapestry, yonder clinging and projecting like masses and garlands of flowers; and, except the mosaics, which are of a thousand colors, everything is white, clean, and smooth as ivory. On the four sides are four great doors, through which you enter the royal apartments. Here wonder becomes enchantment: whatever is richest, most various, and most splendid, whatever the most ardent fancy sees in its most ardent dreams, is to be found in these rooms. From pavement to the vaulted ceiling, around the doors, along the window-frames, in the most hidden corners, wherever one's glance falls, one sees such a luxuriance of ornaments in gold and precious stones, such a close network of arabesques and inscriptions, such a marvellous profusion of designs and colors, that one has scarcely taken twenty steps before one is amazed and confused, and the wearied eye wanders here and there searching for a hand's breadth of bare wall where it may flee and rest. In one of these rooms the guide pointed out a red spot which covered a good part of the marble pavement, and said in a solemn voice, "These are the blood-stains of Don Fadrique, grand master of the order of Santiago, who was killed on this very spot, in the year 1358, by order of his brother, King Don Pedro."
I remember that when I heard these words I looked in the face of the custodian, as if to say, "Come, let us be going," and that good man answered in a dry tone,
"Caballero, if I had told you to believe this thing on my word, you would have had every reason to doubt; but when you can see the thing with your very eyes, I may be wrong, but—it seems to me...."
"Yes," I hastened to say—"yes, it is blood: I believe it, I see it; let's say no more about it."
But if one can be playful over the blood-spots, one cannot be so over the story of the crime; the sight of the place revives in the mind all the most horrible details. Through the great gilded halls one seems to hear the echo of Don Fadrique's footsteps, followed by those of the bowmen armed with bludgeons; the palace is immersed in gloom; one hears no other sound save that of the executioners and their victim; Don Fadrique tries to enter the courtyard; Lopez de Padilla catches him; Fadrique throws him off and is in the court; he grasps his sword; curses on it! the cross of the hilt is held fast in the mantle of the order of Santiago; the bowmen gain upon him; he has not time to unsheath the sword; he flees here and there, groping his way; Fernandez de Roa overtakes him and fells him with a blow of his club; the others run up and set upon him, and Fadrique dies in a pool of blood....
But this sad recollection is lost among the thousand images of the sensuous Moorish kings. Those graceful little windows, where it seems as if you ought to see every other moment the languid face of an odalisque; those secret doors, at which you pause in spite of yourself, as if you heard the rustle of garments; those sleeping chambers of the sultans, shrouded in mysterious gloom, where you seem to hear only the confused amorous lament of all the maidens who there lost the flower of their virgin purity; that prodigal variety of color and line, which like a tumultuous and ever-changing harmony arouses the senses to such fantastic flights that you doubt whether you are waking or sleeping; that delicate and lovely architecture, all of slender columns, that seem like the arms of women; capricious arches, little rooms, arched ceilings crowded with ornaments hanging in the form of stalactites, icicles, and clusters of grapes, of as many colors as a flower-garden;—all this stirs your desire to sit down in the middle of one of those rooms and to press to your heart a lovely brown Andalusian head which will make you forget the world and time, and, with one long kiss that drinks away your life, give you eternal sleep.
On the ground floor the most beautiful room is the Hall of the Ambassadors, formed by four great arches which support a gallery with forty-four smaller arches, and above a beautiful cupola carved, painted, gilded, and chased with inimitable grace and fabulous splendor.
On the upper floor, where were the winter apartments, there remain only an oratory of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, and a little room in which the king Don Pedro is said to have slept. From it one descends by a narrow mysterious staircase to the rooms where dwelt the famous Maria de Padilla, the favorite of Don Pedro, whom popular tradition accuses of instigating the king to kill his brother.
Moorish Arches, Alcazar, Seville
