On returning to the church after I had made the round of all the chapels and was preparing to leave, I was impressed by a suspicion that there was something else still to be seen. I had not read the Guidebook and had been told nothing, but I heard an inner voice which said to me, "Seek!" and, in fact, I sought with my eyes in every direction, without knowing what I sought. A cicerone noticed me and sidled up to me, as all of his kind do, like an assassin, and asked me with an air of mystery, "Quiere usted algo?" (Do you wish something, sir?)
"I should like to know," I replied, "if there is anything to see in this cathedral besides that which I have seen already?"
"How!" exclaimed the cicerone; "you have not seen the royal chapel, have you, sir?"
"What is there in the royal chapel?"
"What is there? Caramba! Nothing less than the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholics."
I could have said so! I had in my mind a place ready for this idea, and the idea was lacking! The Catholic kings must certainly have been buried in Granada, where they fought the last great chivalrous war of the Middle Ages, and where they gave Christopher Columbus a commission to fit out ships which bore him to the New World. I ran rather than walked to the royal chapel, preceded by the limping cicerone; an old sacristan opened the door of the sacristy, and before he allowed me to enter and see the tombs he led me to a sort of glass cupboard full of precious objects, and said to me, "You will remember that Isabella the Catholic, to furnish Christopher Columbus with the money that he needed to supply the ships for the voyage, not knowing where to turn because the coffers of the state were empty, put her jewels in pawn."
"Yes: well?" I demanded impatiently; and, divining the answer, felt my heart beat faster the while.
"Well," replied the sacristan, "that is the box in which the queen locked her jewels to send them to be pawned."
And so saying he opened the cupboard and took out the box and handed it to me.
Oh! brave men may say what they will; as for me, there are things that make me tremble and weep. I have touched the box that contained the treasure by which Columbus was enabled to discover America. Every time I repeat those words my blood is stirred, and I add, "I have touched it with these hands," and I look at my hands.