Like the Cathedral, the Lonja was built of the warm, buff-hued native stone, and the marble flooring was also of Majorcan origin, for it was quarried in the mountains of the island. The materials used in the construction were the same; but while the Cathedral impresses by its solemn majesty of conception, the Lonja charms with its beautiful simplicity of design, its inspiriting sense of light and air. The four wide windows were partly boarded up, the light entering only through the open carving at the tops. Yet the hall was so well illuminated that it was easy to see every detail of the pictures that covered a great portion of the walls.
The collection of pictures, though of no great importance, one imagines might be better hung, better framed, and in some way catalogued. Certain of the canvasses lacked frames. A soiled card inscribed with the name of the artist was stuck in the frames of others. One portion of the wall-space was covered by interesting old paintings that had been removed from the antique church of San Domingo. And a large modern picture by a well-known Spanish painter attracted us both by the excellence of its workmanship and by the peculiarity of its subject: a bride and bridegroom—the man old, uninviting, and with strangely deformed feet; the woman young, attractive, and evidently of a lower social position—were standing before a brilliantly lit altar joining hands in marriage. On the bride's left stood her peasant mother, proud almost to arrogance at the wealthy marriage her pretty daughter was making. Behind were two workmen brothers, whispering and giggling.
The satire of the artist's intention was revealed in the title, En el nombre del Padre, y del [Higo], y del Espiritu Santo, which was conspicuously painted on the frame.
High on the wall over the door that opens on to the garden two grotesque gargoyles look down on a finely sculptured bas-relief of the Virgin and Child. Across the little enclosure with its fruit-laden palm-tree, its tired-looking olive—how is it that olives always seem to pine for mountain slopes?—and its aloes, is a strikingly antique gate.
As the keeper of the keys pointed out, it was the original gate of the mole of the ancient port, and when in the seventeenth century the harbour was reconstructed, it was wisely deemed worthy of preservation. Behind it is the antique Concilio del Mar, which is now the Escuela Superior de Comercio.
Showing us a door leading to a staircase, the custodian suggested that the view to be obtained from the roof of the Lonja was fine.
He did not attempt to join our climb, and when we had mounted the eighty-two steps of the spiral stair we did not wonder that he had refrained. But the sight from the path which extended round the four sides of the square roof was wonderful. Each point of view held fresh interest—whether it was the harbour with the shipping and the shining sea beyond, or the grand Cathedral seen across the lively Marina, or the eight-storey-high houses, whose upper-floor dwellings opened to roof terraces or blossomed out in poultry-houses and dove-cots. But best of all, I think, was the vista of the road leading towards Santa Catalina, and the Terreno, and the Castle of Bellver, behind which the sun was setting.