... "All is peace and silence,
And their names are no longer heard."
But as I looked at those marble seats, half hidden in the shrubbery, and fixed my eyes on the shadow of certain distant paths, and thought of those queens, those lovers, and those mad pranks, I could not refrain from a sigh, which was not one of pity, and a secret sense of bitterness stung me to the heart; and I said, like poor Adan in the poem Diablo Mundo, "How are these grand ladies made? How do they live? What do they do? Do they talk, make love, and enjoy like us?" And I left for Toledo, imagining the love of a queen like a young adventurer of the Arabian Nights.
TOLEDO.
When one approaches an unknown city one ought to have near by some one who has already seen it and is able to indicate the opportune moment to put one's head out of the window and get the first view. I had the good fortune to be informed in time. Some one said to me, "There is Toledo!" and I sprang to the window with an exclamation of wonder.
Toledo rises on a sheer rocky height, at whose foot the Tagus describes a grand curve. From the plain one sees only the rocks and the walls of the fortress, and beyond the wall the tips of the belfries and the towers. The houses are hidden from view; the city seems to be closed and inaccessible, and presents the appearance of an abandoned stronghold rather than of a city. From the walls to the river-banks there is not a single house nor tree; all is bare, parched, craggy, precipitous; not a soul is in sight; you would say that to make the ascent it would be necessary to climb, and it seems that at the first appearance of a man on the face of those rocks a shower of arrows would fall upon him from the top of the wall.
You leave the train, get into a carriage, and arrive at the entrance of a bridge. It is the famous bridge Alcantara, which spans the Tagus, surmounted by a beautiful Moorish gate in the form of a tower, which gives it a bold, severe appearance. Crossing the bridge, you turn into a wide roadway which winds up in large serpentine curves until it reaches the top of the mountain. Here it really seems that you are under a fortified city of the Middle Ages, and you imagine yourself in the guise of a Moor or a Goth or a soldier of Alfonso VI. From every part precipitous rocks hang over your head, crumbling walls, towers, and the ruins of ancient bastions, and higher up the last wall which encircles the city, black, crowned with enormous battlements, opened here and there by great breaches, behind which the imprisoned houses rear their heads; and as you climb higher and higher the city seems to draw back and hide itself. Halfway up the ascent you come to the Puerto del Sol, a jewel of Moorish architecture, consisting of two embattled towers which are joined over a very graceful double-arched colonnade, under which runs the ancient street; and from that point, if you look back, you may see at a glance the Tagus, the valley, and the hills. You go on and find other walls and other ruins, and finally the first houses of the city.
What a city! At the first moment I caught my breath. The carriage had turned down a little street, so narrow that the hubs of the wheels almost touched the walls of the houses.