“That doesn’t interest you?”
“Not a bit. The plays don’t much, for that matter. I’m glad our literature has them, but all that sort of speculation seems to me a crying waste of time and mental energy. Let’s have the lecture. What did you say your black’s name was?”
“Black! Boabdil had beautiful golden hair and blue eyes.” And she sketched the vacillating fate of that ill-starred young monarch while they sat on a bench opposite the great façade of the Alcazaba, that once impregnable citadel swarming with turbaned Moors. To Catalina they were almost visible to-day, so vivid was her historical sense; and, as ever, she caught Over in the rush of her enthusiasm. He always invited these little disquisitions, less for the information, which he usually forgot, than for the pleasure of watching the changing glow on Catalina’s so often immobile face. Moreover, she was invariably amiable when roaming through history. Her voice, in spite of its little Western accent, was soft and rich and lingered in his ear long after she had fallen into a silence which presented a contemptuous front to such masculine artfulness as he possessed.
To-day, after they had passed through the little door of the Alcazaba, she fell abruptly from garrulity into a state of apparent dumbness; but Over walked contentedly beside her in the warm and fragrant silence of the ruin. Except for the ramparts and the two great watch-towers where the Moor had contemplated for so many anxious months the vast army and glittering camp of Ferdinand and Isabella on the vega beyond Granada, and the sheer sides of the rock on which the fortress was built, there was little to suggest that it had once been the warlike guardian of the palace. It rather looked as if it had been the pleasure-gardens of a pampered harem, with its winding walks between terraces of bright flowers, its fountains, overgrown, like the fragments of wall, with ivy, and its grottos, always cool, and of a delicious fragrance; while from every point there was a glimpse of snow mountain or sunburned plain.
After they had rambled in silence for an hour Catalina emerged from her centres and suggested that they go up to the platform of the Torre de la Vela. From that high point, famous for having been the first in Granada to fly the pennons of Aragon and Castile, they saw the perfect rim of hills and mountains that curve about the city and its vega. On the tremendous ridges and peaks of the Sierras, no less than on the blooming slopes of the lower ranges, there once were watch-towers and fortified towns, the outer rind of the pomegranate which the Spaniards stripped off bit by bit until they reached the luscious pith that so aptly symbolized the delights of the Moorish stronghold. The fortresses are gone, but the eternal snows still glitter, the Xenil is as silvery as of yore, while the sloping city of Granada itself presents an indescribably ancient appearance, with its millions of tiles, baked and faded by the centuries into a soft, pinkish gray, its streets so narrow that one seems to look down upon a vast roof, from which crosses and towers rise like strange growths that mar the harmony of a scene otherwise perfect in line and delicate color. The solitary tower of the cathedral rises from the mass of roofs like a mere monument above the tombs of Ferdinand and Isabella, who, for all they lie in consecrated stone, have ever about them the phantom of the ancient mosque.
Above the roofs the very air was pink; and out on the shimmering vega to the western hills the sun was seeking to pay his evening visit. On the right, or north, of the Alhambra, across the river Darro, was the Albaicin on a steep mountain spur, once both sister and rival of the palace hill, “the whole surrounded by high walls three leagues in circuit, with twelve gates, and fortified by 1030 towers.” It was, in general, faithful to Boabdil el Chico, Catalina informed her companion, thirsty for knowledge, and was the scene of terrific battles between that whim of destiny and his unrighteous old father Muley Aben Hassan. To-day it is given over to thousands of gypsies, who are faithful to nothing but their nefarious and ofttimes murderous instincts. But by far the most imposing objects in the extensive panorama, after the snow mountains, were the ruined towers of the Alhambra itself. Besides the three in the foreground, and Comares, or romantic memories, was a line in varying stages of picturesque decay, extending along the precipitous bluff overhanging the Darro. Between were gardens of glowing flowers, narrow streets, ruined walls, wild patches of wood where the cliff-side jutted; and on the south side of the Alhambra hill, parallel with the Darro, the dense park of elms planted by the Duke of Wellington.
“There is the town of Santa Fé,” said Catalina, pointing to a speck on the edge of the vega. “Ferdinand and Isabella caused it to be built when they were in camp. The articles of Granada’s capitulation were signed there, and their contract with Columbus. Over there in the Sierras, somewhere, is the spot where Boabdil turned to take a last look at Granada, and was reproached by his mother—who was far more of a man than he was—for weeping like a woman for what he could not defend like a man. When I was a child my mother used to sing me to sleep with ‘The Last Sigh of the Moor.’”
And she suddenly trilled forth with an abandonment of sorrow which startled Over more than any phase she had yet exhibited.
“‘Ay, nunca, nunca, nunca mas veré!’ That means, ‘Aye, never, never, never more to see,’” she translated, practically. “How close it brings the island of Santa Catalina, undiscovered by the tourist then, and our lonely little inn! My mother always sang me to sleep in a big rocking-chair, and my father sat by a student-lamp and read, frowning until she had finished. It all seems a thousand years ago.”
“Did you miss your parents much?” asked Over, curiously.