Wanderings in Spain

by Théophile Gautier

When we had finished our repast we strolled through the city, preceded by a guide, who was a barber by profession, but exercised his talents in showing about tourists during his leisure moments.

The streets of Toledo are exceedingly narrow; a person leaning out of a window on one side may shake hands with a person leaning out of a window on the other; and nothing would be more easy than to get over the balconies, if propriety was not preserved and aerial familiarities prevented by very handsome rails and charming iron bars, worked with that artistic richness of which they are so prodigal on the other side of the Pyrenees. This want of breadth would cause all the partisans of civilization among us to cry out in a frightful manner. These good people dream of nothing but immense places, vast squares, inordinately broad streets, and other embellishments more or less progressive. Nothing, however, can be more sensible than narrow streets in a very hot climate; and the architects who are making such large gaps in the buildings at Algiers will find this out very shortly. At the bottom of these narrow divisions so appropriately made between the blocks and masses of houses, you enjoy the most delicious shade and coolness: you walk about, completely protected, in the human polypier called a city; the spoonfuls of molten lead that Phœbus pours down from the sky at the hour of noon never fall upon you; the projecting roofs serve all the purposes of parasols.

If, for your misfortune, you are obliged to traverse any plazuela or calle ancha, exposed to the canicular sunbeams, you will soon appreciate the wisdom of people of former days, who were not accustomed to sacrifice everything to a notion of stupid regularity; the flagstones are as hot as the iron plates by means of which mountebanks make geese and turkeys dance the Cracovienne; the wretched dogs, who possess neither shoes nor alpagartas, gallop over these stones howling most piteously. If you raise the knocker of a door, it burns your fingers; you feel your brains boiling inside your skull like a saucepan full of water on the fire; your nose becomes the colour of a cardinal's hat; your hands are so sunburnt that you seem to have a pair of gloves on; and you evaporate in perspiration. Such is the advantage to be obtained by having spacious squares and broad streets. Every one who has walked along the Calle d'Alcala at Madrid, between twelve and two o'clock in the day, will be of my opinion. Besides, in order to have broad streets, you are obliged to reduce the size of the houses, and the opposite process strikes me as being the more sensible one of the two. Of course, these observations only apply to warm countries, where it never rains, where mud is a chimera, and where carriages are extremely uncommon. Narrow streets in our showery climate would be nothing more or less than so many abominable sewers. In Spain, the women go out on foot in black satin shoes; and, shod in this manner, walk considerable distances; I admire them for this, especially at Toledo, where the pavement is formed of small polished stones, shining and pointed, and which seem to have been carefully placed with the sharpest end upwards; but the women's little arched and nervous feet are as hard as a gazelle's hoof, and they skip along in the most good-humoured manner imaginable, over this pavement resembling the edge of a diamond, which causes the traveller, who is accustomed to the soft luxury of the Asphalte Seyssel, and the elasticity of the Bitume Polonceau, to cry out with pain.

STREET IN TOLEDO.

The appearance of the houses of Toledo is imposing and severe; they have very few windows looking out upon the street, and those they do have are generally secured by iron bars. The doors, ornamented by pillars of bluish granite, and surmounted by balls, a kind of decoration which is very common, have an air of solidity and thickness which is increased still more by constellations of enormous nails. They seem to partake, at the same time, of the nature of convents, prisons, and fortresses, and also somewhat of harems, for the Moors used once to be there. Some of these houses, by a strange contradiction, are painted and decorated on the outside, either in fresco or water-colours, with false bas-reliefs, cameos, flowers, rockwork, and garlands, with incense-urns, medallions, Cupids, and all the mythological rubbish of the last century. The Trumeau and Pompadour style of these houses produces the strangest and most comical effect in the midst of their scowling sisters of feudal or Moorish origin.

We were conducted through an inextricable labyrinth of small lanes, in which my companion and myself marched in Indian file, like the geese in the fable, because there was not sufficient room for us to walk arm-in-arm, until we reached the Alcazar, which is situated like an Acropolis on the most elevated piece of ground in the city. We succeeded in entering after some slight discussion; for the first impulse of people of whom you ask anything is to refuse, whatever your request may be. "Come again this evening, or to-morrow—the keeper is taking his siesta—the keys are lost—you must have a pass from the governor." Such are the answers you obtain at first: but, by exhibiting the all-powerful tiny piece of silver, or, in extreme cases, the glittering duro, you always end by effecting an entrance.

The Alcazar, which was built upon the ruins of the old Moorish palace, is now a perfect ruin itself. It might be mistaken for one of those marvellous architectural dreams which Piranese used to embody in his magnificent etchings; it is the work of Covarubias, an artist little known, but far superior to the heavy, dull Herrera, who enjoys a far higher reputation than he deserves.

The façade, which is ornamented with florid arabesques in the purest style of the Renaissance, is a masterpiece of elegance and nobleness. The burning sun of Spain, which reddens the marble and dyes the stone with a tint of saffron, has clothed it in a robe of rich, strong colour, very different from the black leprosy with which past centuries have encrusted our old edifices. According to the expression of a great poet; Time, who is so intelligent, has passed his thumb over the angles of the marble and its too rigid outlines, and given the finishing touch, the last degree of polish, to this sculpture, already so soft and so supple. I particularly remember a staircase of the most fairy-like elegance, with marble columns, balustrades and steps, already half-crumbled away, conducting to a door which looks out upon an abyss, for this portion of the edifice has fallen down. This admirable staircase on which a king might be content to live, and which leads to nothing, possesses a certain indefinite air of singularity and grandeur.