Wanderings in Spain

by Théophile Gautier

"O you who gaze on the lions fixed to their places! remark that they only require life to be perfect. And you to whom this Alcazar and this kingdom fall as an inheritance, take them from the noble hands who have governed them, without displeasure and without resistance. May God preserve you for the work which you come to perform, and protect you for ever from the revenge of your enemy! Honour and glory be yours. O Mohammed! our king, endowed with great virtues, by the aid of which you have conquered all! May God never permit this fine garden, the image of your virtues, to have a rival that surpasses it! The substance which tints the basin of the fountain is like mother-of-pearl beneath the clear sparkling water; the flowing stream resembles melting silver, for the limpidness of the water and the whiteness of the stone have no equals; they might be likened unto a drop of transparent essence on a face of alabaster. It would be difficult to follow its course. Look at the water and look at the basin, and you will not be able to distinguish whether it is the water that is motionless or the marble that ripples. Like the prisoner of love, whose visage is covered with vexation and fear by the look of the envious, so is the jealous water indignant at the stone, and the stone envious of the water. To this inexhaustible stream may be compared the hand of our king, who is as liberal and as generous as the lion is valiant and strong."

It was in the basin of the Fountain of Lions that the heads of the thirty-six Abencerrages, whom the Zegris had drawn there by stratagem, fell. The rest of the Abencerrages would have shared the same fate, had it not been for the devotedness of a little page, who ran at the risk of his life to warn them against entering the fatal court. On having your attention directed to the bottom of the basin, you perceive large reddish spots, an indelible accusation left by the victims against their executioners. Unfortunately, the erudite world declares that the Abencerrages and the Zegris have never existed. With respect to this I am completely guided by romances, popular traditions, and the novel of Monsieur de Châteaubriand, and I firmly believe that these purple-looking marks are blood and not rust.

We had established our head-quarters in the Court of Lions; our furniture consisted of two mattresses, which we rolled up in a corner in the day-time, of a brass lamp, of an earthenware jar, and of a few bottles of sherry that we kept in a fountain to render the wine cool. We slept one night in the Hall of the Two Sisters, and the next in that of the Abencerrages, but it was not without some slight fear, as I lay stretched on my cloak, that I looked at the white rays of the moon, which appeared quite astonished at crossing the yellow and flickering flame of a lamp, shoot through the openings of the roof into the water of the basin and across the shining ground.

The popular traditions collected by Washington Irving in his "Tales of the Alhambra," now came into my mind; the stories of the "Headless Horse" and of the "Hairy Phantom," gravely related by Father Echeverria, appeared to me very probable, above all, when the light was out. The likelihood of the legends appears much greater in the night-time, when these dark places are filled with uncertain reflections, which give to all objects of a vague outline a fantastic appearance: doubt is the son of the day, faith the daughter of the night; and what astonishes me is, that St. Thomas believed in our Saviour after having felt his wound. I am not sure that I myself did not see the Abencerrages walking about in the moonlight, with their heads under their arms, along the galleries; at all events, the shadows of the columns assumed forms diabolically suspicious, and the breeze, as it passed through the arcades, so resembled the breathing of a human being, that it made you doubt.

One Sunday morning, about four or five o'clock, we felt ourselves, while yet asleep, inundated on our mattresses with a fine and soaking rain. This was owing to the conduits of the water-jets having opened earlier than usual, in honour of a prince of Saxe Coburg, who was come to view the Alhambra, and who, they said, was to marry the young queen, as soon as she was of age.

We had scarcely time to rise and dress before the prince arrived, with two or three persons of his suite. He was half mad with rage. The keepers, in order to receive him in a proper manner, had fitted to every fountain the most ridiculous pieces of mechanism and hydraulic instruments imaginable. One of these inventions aimed, by the means of a little white tin carriage and lead soldiers, which were turned by the force of the water, at representing the journey of the queen to Valencia. You may judge of the prince's satisfaction at this ingenious and constitutional piece of refinement. The Fray Gerundio, a satirical journal of Madrid, persecuted this poor prince with marked animosity. It taxed him, among other crimes, with haggling too much about the charges in his hotel bills, and with having appeared at the theatre in the costume of a majo, with a pointed hat on his head.

A party of Granadians came to spend the day at the Alhambra; there were seven or eight young and pretty women, and five or six cavaliers. They danced to the guitar, played at different games, and sung in chorus, to a delightful air, a song by Fray Luis de Leon, which has become very popular throughout Andalusia. As the water-jets had stopped through having begun to shoot forth their silver streams too early, and as the basins were dry, the giddy young girls seated themselves in a round on the edge of the alabaster basin of the Hall of the Two Sisters, so as to form a kind of flower-basket, and, throwing back their pretty heads, again took up simultaneously the burden of their song.

The Generalife is situated at a little distance from the Alhambra, on a pass of the same mountain. Access is gained to it by a kind of hollow road, that traverses the ravine of Los Molinos, which is bordered with fig-trees, having enormous shiny leaves, with palm oaks, pistachio-trees, laurels, and rock roses, of a remarkably exuberant nature. The ground is composed of yellow sand teeming with water, and of wonderful fecundity. Nothing is more delightful than to follow this road, which appears as if it ran through a virgin forest of America, to such an extent is it obstructed with foliage and flowers, and such is the overwhelming perfume of the aromatic plants you inhale there. Vines start through the cracks of the crumbling walls, and from all their branches hang fantastic runners, and leaves resembling Arabian ornaments in the beauty of their form; the aloe opens its fan of azured blades, and the orange-tree twists its knotty wood, and clings with its fang-like roots to the rents in the steep sides of the ravine. Everything here flourishes and blooms in luxuriant disorder, full of the most charming effects of chance. A wandering jasmine-branch introduces a white star among the scarlet flowers of the pomegranate-tree; and a laurel shoots from one side of the road to the other to embrace a cactus, in spite of its thorns. Nature, abandoned to herself, seems to pride herself on her coquetry, and to wish to show how far even the most exquisite and finished art always remains behind her.

After a quarter of an hour's walk, you come to the Generalife, which is, so to say, nothing but the casa de campo, the country-house of the Alhambra. The exterior of it, like that of all oriental buildings, is very simple: large walls without windows, and surmounted by a terrace with a gallery divided into arcades, the whole being crowned with a small modern belvedere, constitute its architecture. Of the Generalife nothing now remains but some arcades, and some large panels of arabesques, unfortunately clogged with layers of whitewash, which have been applied again and again with all the obstinacy and despair of cleanliness. Little by little have the delicate sculptures and the wonderful guilloches of these remains become filled up, until they have at last disappeared. What is at present nothing but a faintly-vermiculated wall, was formerly open lace-work, as fine as those ivory leaves which the patience of the Chinese carves for ladies' fans. The brush of the whitewasher has caused more chefs-d'œuvre to disappear than the scythe of Time, if we may be allowed to make use of this mythological expression. In a pretty well preserved hall is a suite of smoky portraits of the kings of Spain, but the only merit they possess is a chronological one.

The real charm of the Generalife consists in its gardens and its waters. A canal, paved with marble, runs through the whole length of the enclosure, and rolls its rapid and abundant waters beneath a series of arcades of foliage, formed by twisting and curiously-cut yews. Orange-trees and cypresses are planted on each side of it. It was at the foot of one of these cypresses, which is of a prodigious bulk, and which dates from the time of the Moors, that the favourite of Boabdil, if we are to believe the legend, often proved that bolts and bars are but slight guarantees for the virtue of sultanas. There is one thing, at least, very certain, and that is, that the yew is very thick, and very old.