"Ah! leave my soul in peace!" I replied, shrugging my shoulders.
We crossed the garden of the Cabinet of Lindaraja and a mysterious court called the Patio de la Reja, and by a long gallery that commands a view of the country reached the top of one of the farthest towers of the Alhambra, called the Mirador de la Reina (the Queen's toilet), shaded by a little pavilion and open all round, hanging over an abyss like an eagle's nest. The view one enjoys from this point—one may say it without fear of contradiction—has not its equal on the face of the earth.
Imagine an immense plain, green as a meadow, covered with young grass, crossed in all directions by endless rows of cypresses, pines, oaks, and poplars, dotted with dense orange-groves that in the distance look no larger than shrubs, and with great orchards and gardens so crowded with fruit trees that they look like green hillocks; and the river Xenil winding through this immense plain, gleaming among the groves and gardens like a great silver ribbon; and all around wooded hills, and beyond the hills lofty rocks of fantastic form, which complete the picture of a barrier-wall with gigantic towers separating that earthly paradise from the world; and there, just beneath one's eyes, the city of Granada, partly extending to the plain and partly on the slope of the hill, all interspersed with groups of trees, shapeless masses of verdure which rise and wave above the roofs of the houses like enormous plumes, until it seems as if they were striving to expand and unite and cover the entire city; and still nearer the deep valley of the Darro more than covered—yes, filled to overflowing and almost heaped full—with its prodigious growth of vegetation, rising like a mountain, and above it there rises yet again a grove of gigantic poplars tossing their topmost boughs so close under the windows of the tower that one can almost touch them; and to the right beyond the Darro, on a high hill towering toward heaven, bold and rounded like a cupola, the palace of the Generalife, encircled by its aërial gardens and almost hidden in a grove of laurels, poplars, and pomegranates; and in the opposite direction a marvellous spectacle, a thing incredible, a vision of a dream—the Sierra Nevada, after the Alps, the highest mountain-range in Europe crowned with snow, white even to a few miles from the gates of Granada, white even to the hills on whose sides spread the pomegranates and palms, and where a vegetation almost tropical expands in all its splendid pomp.
Imagine now over this vast paradise, containing all the smiling graces of the Orient and all the severe beauties of the North, wedding Europe to Africa, and bringing to the nuptials all the choicest marvels of nature, and exhaling to heaven all the perfumes of the earth blended in one breath,—imagine above this happy valley the sky and sun of Andalusia, rolling on to its setting and tinting the peaks with a divine rose-color, and painting the mountain-sides of the Sierra with all the colors of the rainbow, and clothing them with all the reflections of the most limpid azure pearls, its rays breaking in a thousand mists of gold, purple, and gray upon the rocks encircling the plain, and, as it sinks in a flame of fire, casting like a last good-night a luminous crown about the gloomy towers of the Alhambra and the flower-crowned pinnacles of the Generalife, and tell me if this world can give anything more solemn, more glorious, more intoxicating than this love-feast of the earth and sky, before which for nine centuries Granada has trembled with delight and throbbed with pride?
The roof of the Mirador de la Reina is supported by little Moorish columns, between which extend flattened arches which give the pavilion an extremely fanciful and graceful appearance. The walls are frescoed, and one may see along the friezes the initials of Isabella and Philip interwoven with cupids and flowers. Close by the door there still remains a stone of the ancient pavement, all perforated, upon which it is said the sultanas sat to be enveloped in the clouds of perfumed vapor which arose from below.
Everything in this place tells of love and happiness. There one breathes an air as pure as that on a mountain-peak, there one perceives a mingled fragrance of myrtles and roses, and no other sound reaches the ear save the murmur of the Darro as it dashes among the rocks of its stony bed, and the singing of a thousand birds hidden in the dense foliage of the valley; it is truly a nest of loves, a hanging alcove where to go and dream of an aërial balcony to which one might climb and thank God for being happy.
"Ah, Gongora," I exclaimed after contemplating for some moments that enchanting spectacle, "I would give years of my life to be able to summon here, with a stroke of a magic wand, all the dear ones who are looking for me in Italy."
Gongora pointed out a large space on the wall, all black with dates and names of visitors to the Alhambra, written with crayon and charcoal and cut with knives.