Oh, marvellous! It was the court of a Moorish house surrounded by graceful little columns surmounted by lovely arches, with those indescribable traceries of the Alhambra along the porticoes and around the mullioned windows, with the beams and ceiling carved and enamelled with little niches for vases of flowers and urns of perfume, with a pool in the middle, and all the traces and memorials of the delicate life of an opulent family. And in that house lived those wretched people!
We went out and entered other houses, in all of which I found some fragments of Moorish architecture and sculpture. From time to time Gongora would say to me, "This was a harem. Those were the baths of the women; up yonder was the chamber of a favorite;" and I fixed my eyes upon every bit of the arabesqued wall and upon all the little columns of the windows, as if to ask them for a revelation of their secrets—only a name or a magic word with which I might reconstruct in an instant the ruined edifice and summon the beautiful Arabians who had dwelt there. But, alas! amid the columns and under the arches of the windows there were only rags and wrinkled faces.
Among other houses, we entered one where we found a group of girls sewing under the shade of a tree in the courtyard, directed by an old woman. They were all working upon a great piece of cloth that seemed like a mat or a bed-spread, in black and gray stripes. I approached and asked one of the girls, "What is this?"
They all looked up and with a concerted movement spread the cloth open, so that I could see their work plainly. Almost before I had seen it I cried, "I will buy it."
They all began to laugh. It was the mantle of an Andalusian mountaineer, made to wear in the saddle, rectangular in form, with an opening in the middle to put one's head through, embroidered in bright-colored worsteds along the two shortest sides and around the opening. The design of the embroideries, which represented birds and fantastic flowers, green, blue, white, red, and yellow, all in a mass, was as crude as a pattern a child might make: the beauty of the work lay altogether in the harmony of the colors, which was truly marvellous. I cannot express the sensation produced by the sight of that mantle, except by saying that it laughed and filled one with its cheerfulness; and it seems to me impossible to imagine anything gayer, more festive, or more childishly and gracefully capricious. It was a thing to look upon in order to bring yourself out of a bad humor, or when you wish to write a pretty verse in a lady's album, or when you are expecting a person whom you wish to receive with your brightest smile.
"When will you finish these embroideries?" I asked one of the girls.
"Hoy mismo" (to-day), they all replied in chorus.
"And what is the mantle worth?"
"Cinco" (five), stammered one.
The old women pierced her with a glance which seemed to say, "Blockhead!" and answered hastily, "Six duros."