The quaint old garden, which we saw on the way out, had tall box hedges and a spreading magnolia, and crumbling stone seats surrounded the fountain, whose waters have long run dry.
In the evening I had gone to bed early, leaving the others to follow their own devices, and was sleeping the sleep of the woman who had been all day in the open air, when an insistent calling of my name aroused me back to semi-consciousness, and I gradually gathered that I must descend to open the door. The men, who had gone out walking in the moonlight, had returned to find that, inadvertently, the house door had been locked and barred against them.
Had my room been less accessible, or my sleep more profound, they might have knocked and called in vain, for although it was hardly nine o'clock, Fernando and Netta were deep in the slumber of the agriculturist in some unknown roof-chamber of the tall old house.
Although so isolated in position, Miramar is intimately connected with the romantic life-history of Ramon Lull—rake, recluse, scholar, fanatic, martyr, saint—what you will.
The father of Ramon Lull—the name is variously spelt: Raymund Lully in the English; Ramundo Lulio in the Spanish; and Ramon Lull in the Mallorquin, which has a bad habit of chipping the ends off words—was one of those brave young knights of Aragon who fought with their King during his invasion and conquest of Majorca. When that war had ended happily for all but the Moors, the parent Lull, in company with the other nobles who had supported King Jaime the Conquistador, was rewarded with an estate in Majorca. And there, about six years later, his son Ramon was born.
During his earlier manhood Ramon gave little hint of what he was ultimately to become. His behaviour was by no means sedate. Nay, more, it is on record that his love affairs were so numerous as to become a public scandal, which reached a climax on his riding on horseback into church in pursuit of a devout lady whom he madly adored.
The fatal illness of this lady, by awakening his conscience and rousing him to a sense of sin, changed the current of his thoughts, and after a period of self-accusation and contrition, he decided not only to lead a better life, but to spend that life in the reformation of others.
King Jaime, on being applied to, supplied the funds necessary for the carrying out of his project, and Lull erected a college at Miramar, where close by the house of the Archduke a fragment of the original chapel is still to be seen. His scheme was to teach thirteen monks Arabic, so that they could go forth as missionaries among the infidels. And Miramar, one of the most secluded spots on earth, as well as one of the most beautiful, he deemed a suitable place for study.