H! the beautiful south it is at Seville! Nothing can shut it out! With its glamour of all strange things in nature, story, and song; Moslem and Christian knights and lovely sultanas hung with priceless pearls, dead caliphs haunting blood-stained towers, shades of Christian conquerors and swarthy slaves, the curse of a murderous past, the glitter of a glorious present, the clash, the confusion, Arab palaces, marble-paved, heavy with far-off tales, and gates, walls, and castles of nations long died out, yet with a poetic life still speaking!
The narrow streets, across which lovers still whisper to each other under the moon, the unshuttered windows, iron-bound, where Inez may creep down and warble to Alonso, concealed in a dark mantle behind the shadow of a wall, where roses fling curtains of perfumed blossom, orange petals scent the air, and southern sunsets spread sudden splendours in the afterglow, as the earth lies black under a sky palpitating like a furnace, till night falls and countless stars come forth to light a paler day!
Two things are most notable at Seville; the great mosque, now the cathedral, and the Alcazar. The Alcazar, inhabited by long generations of Arab caliphs up to the time of St. Fernando, is still untouched, a Moorish fortress in the centre of the city, girt by tapia walls and castellated towers. Not a poetic ruin like the Alhambra, but a real substantial castle, reached through the Plaza del Trionfo by which Fernando passed.
It was again rebuilt and redecorated by Don Pedro el Cruel, 1350, King of Castile and Leon, at the same period as the Alhambra, Yussuf, Caliph of Granada, being on such friendly terms with Don Pedro that the same Moorish architect wrought for both.
Passing an outer barbican with two low towers the Patio de las Banderas, where floats the flag of Spain, a dark corridor leads to the inner Patio de la Monteria, where the portal of Don Pedro blazes in the sun, a glittering blending of red, blue, and gold, set on snowy surfaces of finest fretwork; painted roofs casting rich shadows, arabesques formed into Cufic letters, diapered borders parting into groups of horseshoe arches, and a Gothic inscription setting forth “that the most high and powerful Don Pedro, by the Grace of God King of Castile and Leon, ordered these castles and fortresses to be re-erected.” The magic of it all is wonderful, coming into sight as it does, rising tier above tier, parapet on parapet, in a glow of Oriental colour, to a central dome cutting against the azure sky; the door a curious mosaic of dark wood, and on either side low marble benches, sunk into the arcaded carvings of the wall, where the young King Don Pedro sat to administer justice to all who came, while his dark-haired mistress, Maria de Padilla, watched from above, leaning out of the central mirador (window) of her chamber, still used as a retiring room for the queens of Spain.
One morning Don Pedro, taking his place as usual, surrounded by his alguazils, commanded that certain men should be brought before him whose arrest he had ordered as they were drifting down the Guadalquivir with the tide to Cadiz upon a wooden raft. His knitted brows and sinister aspect boded ill to the rough-looking countrymen brought trembling into the court.
“How comes it, fellows,” asks the king, his steely-blue eyes fixed on the foremost man, “that you dare to come to Seville to cheat me of the dues on the timber that floats down the stream? Think you you will escape unpunished?”
“O King,” one of the men answers, falling on his knees, “in what have we offended? We are four poor men from Puerta Santa Maria, incapable of deceiving any one—much less your royal Grace.”
“Liar!” roars the young king, starting from