Spain, v. 2 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

Directly opposite the entrance there is another door, through which one passes into another long, narrow room called the Hall of the Oranges. And from this hall, through a third door, one enters a little chamber called the Cabinet of Lindaraja, very richly ornamented, at the end of which there is a graceful window with two arches overlooking a garden.

To enjoy all the beauty of this magical architecture one must leave the Hall of the Two Sisters, cross the Court of the Lions, and enter a room called the Hall of the Abencerrages, which lies on the southern side, opposite the Hall of the Two Sisters, to which it is very similar in form and ornamentation. From the end of this hall one looks across the Court of the Lions through the Hall of the Two Sisters into the Hall of the Oranges and even into the Cabinet of Lindaraja and the garden beyond, where a mass of verdure appears under the arches of that jewel of a window. The two sides of this window, so diminutive and full of light when seen in the distance from the end of that suite of darkened rooms, look like two great open eyes, that look at you and make you imagine that beyond them must lie the unfathomable mysteries of paradise.

After seeing the Hall of the Abencerrages we went to see the baths, which are situated between the Hall of the Two Sisters and the Court of the Myrtles. We descended a flight of stairs, passed a long narrow corridor, and came out into a splendid hall called the hall De las Divans, where the favorites of the king came to rest on their Persian rugs to the sound of the lyre after they had bathed in the adjoining rooms. This hall was reconstructed on the plans of the ancient ruins, and adorned with arabesques, gilded and painted, by Spanish artists after the ancient patterns; consequently one may consider it a room of the Moorish period remaining intact in every part. In the middle is a fountain, and in the opposite walls are two alcoves where the women reposed on divans, and overhead the galleries where the musicians played. The walls are laced, dotted, checkered, and mottled with a thousand brilliant hues, presenting the appearance of a tapestry of Chinese stuff shot with golden threads, with an endless interweaving of figures that must have maddened the most patient mosaic-worker on earth.

Nevertheless, a painter was at work in the hall. He was a German who had worked for three months in copying the walls. Gongora knew him, and asked, "It is wearisome work, is it not?"

And he answered with a smile, "I don't find it so," and bent again over his picture.

I looked at him as if he had been a creature from another world.

We entered the little bathing-chambers, vaulted and lighted from above by some star-and flower-shaped apertures in the wall. The bathing-tubs are very large, single blocks of marble enclosed between two walls. The corridors which lead from one room to the other are low and narrow, so that a man can scarcely pass through them; they are delightfully cool. As I stood looking into one of these little rooms I was suddenly impressed with a sad thought.

"What makes you sad?" asked my friend.

"I was thinking," I replied, "of how we live, summer and winter, in houses like barracks, in rooms on the third floor, which are either dark or else flooded with a torrent of light, without marble, without water, without flowers, without columns; I was thinking that we must live so all our lives and die between those walls without once experiencing the delights of these charmed palaces; I was thinking that even in this wretched earthly life one may enjoy vastly, and that I shall not share this enjoyment at all; I was thinking that I might have been born four centuries ago a king of Granada, and that I was born instead a poor man."

My friend laughed, and, taking my arm between his thumb and finger, as if to give me a pinch, he said, "Don't think of that. Think of how much beauty, grace, and mystery these tubs must have seen; of the little feet that have played in their perfumed waters; of the long hair which has fallen over their rims; of the great languid eyes that have looked at the sky through the openings in the vaulted ceiling, while beneath the arches of the Court of the Lions sounded the hastening step of an impatient caliph, and the hundred fountains of the castle sighed with a quickening murmur, 'Come! come! come!' and in a perfumed hall a trembling slave reverently closed the windows with the rose-colored curtains."