Wanderings in Spain

by Théophile Gautier

The perspective is terminated by a porticoed gallery, ornamented with jets of water and marble columns, like the patio of myrtles of the Alhambra. The canal suddenly makes a turn, and you then enter some other places embellished with pieces of water, and the walls of which still preserve traces of the frescoes of the sixteenth century, representing rustic pieces of architecture, and distant views. In the midst of one of the basins, a gigantic rose-bay, of the most incomparable beauty and splendour, is seen to bloom, like an immense flower-basket. At the time when I saw it, it appeared like an explosion of flowers, or the bouquet of a display of vegetable fireworks; its aspect, too, is so blooming and luxuriant, so glaring, if we may be allowed the expression, that it makes the hue of the most vermilion rose appear insipid. Its lovely flowers, shot with all the ardour of desire high up into the pure blue space of the heavens; and its noble-looking leaves, shaped expressly by nature to form a crown for the glorious deeds of heroism, and sprinkled by the spray of the water-jets, sparkled like emeralds glittering in the sun. Never did anything inspire me with a higher sentiment of the beautiful than this rose-bay of the Generalife.

The water is brought to the gardens along a sort of steep acclivity, bordered with little walls, forming on each side a kind of parapet, that support trenches of large hollow tiles, through which the water runs beneath the open sky with the most gay and lively murmur in the world. On each footpace, well-supplied water-jets burst forth from the middle of little basins, and shoot their crystal aigrettes into the thick foliage of the wood of laurels, the branches of which cross and recross one another above them. The mountain streams with water on every side; at each step a spring starts forth, and you continually hear at your side the murmuring of some rivulet, turned out of its course, going to supply some fountain with water, or to carry bloom and verdure to the foot of a tree. The Arabs have carried the art of irrigation to the highest point; their hydraulic works attest the most advanced state of civilization; these works still exist; and it is to them that Granada owes the reputation it has of being the Paradise of Spain, and the fact of its enjoying eternal spring in an African temperature. An arm of the Darro has been turned out of its course by the Arabs, and carried for more than two leagues along the hill of the Alhambra.

From the Belvedere of the Generalife you can plainly perceive the configuration of the Alhambra, with its line of reddish, half-demolished towers, and its remaining pieces of wall, which rise and descend according to the undulations of the mountain. The palace of Charles the Fifth, which is not seen from the side of the city stamps its square and heavy mass, which the sun gilds with a white reflection, on the damask-like sides of the Sierra Neveda, whose white ridges stand out on the horizon in a singular manner. The steeple of Saint Mary's marks its Christian outline above the Moorish embattlements. A few cypresses thrust their mournful leaves through the cracks of the walls, surrounded by all this light and azure, like a melancholy thought in the midst of a joyful fête. The slopes of the hill running down towards the Darro, and the ravine of Los Molinos, disappear beneath an ocean of verdure. It is one of the finest views that can well be imagined.

On the other side, as if to form a contrast with so much verdancy, rises an uncultivated, scorched up, tawny mountain, tinged with dashes of red and yellow ochre; this mountain is called La Silla del Moro, on account of a few remains of some buildings on its summit. It was there that king Boabdil used to view the Arabian horsemen jousting in the Vega with the Christian knights. The recollection of the Moors is still vivid at Granada. You would think that they had quitted the city but yesterday, and, if we may judge by what remains of them, it is really a pity that they ever quitted it at all. What southern Spain requires is African civilization, and not the civilization of Europe, which is not suited to the heat of the climate or to the passions it inspires. Constitutional mechanism can only agree with the temperate zones; above a heat of eighty degrees charters melt or blow up.

As we have now done with the Alhambra and the Generalife, we will traverse the ravine of the Darro, and take a look as we go along the road leading to Monte Sagrado, at the dens of the gitanos, who are pretty numerous at Granada. This road is made through the hill of the Albaycin, which overhangs on one side. Gigantic Indian fig-trees, and enormous nopals raise their prickly heads, of the colour of verdigris, along its impoverished and white-coloured slopes; under the roots of these large unctuous plants, which seem to supply the place of chevaux-de-frise and spiked fences, are dug in the living rock, the dwellings of the gipsies. The entrance to these caverns is whitewashed; a light cord on which hangs a piece of frayed-out tapestry, serves as a door. It is there that the wild race swarms and multiplies; there, children, whose skins are darker than Havannah cigars, play in a state of nudity before the door, without any distinction as to sex, and roll themselves in the dust while uttering sharp and guttural cries. The gitanos are generally blacksmiths, mule-shearers, veterinary doctors, and, above all, horse-dealers. They have a thousand receipts for putting mettle and strength into the most broken-winded and limping animals in the world: a gitano would have made Rozinante gallop, and Sancho's ass would have caracoled under their hands. Their real trade, however, is that of stealing.

The gitanas sell amulets, tell fortunes, and follow those suspicious callings inherent to the women of their race. I saw very few pretty ones, though their faces were remarkable both by their type and character. Their swarthy complexion contrasts strongly with the limpidness of their oriental eyes, the fire of which is tempered by an indescribable and mysterious melancholy, only to be compared to the look inspired by the recollection of a country that is lost to us for ever, or of former grandeur. Their mouth, which is rather thick and deeply coloured, reminds you of the blooming nature of African mouths; the smallness of their forehead, and the curved form of their nose, pronounce them to be of the same origin with the tzigones of Wallachia and Bohemia, and with all the children of that fantastic people which traversed, under the generic name of Egyptians, the whole of the society of the Middle Ages, and the enigmatical filiation of which century upon century has not been able to interrupt. Nearly all of them possess so much natural majesty and freedom in their deportment, and are so well and firmly set, that in spite of their rags, their dirt, and their misery, they seem to be conscious of the antiquity and purity of their race, and ever to remember that it is free from all alloy, for these gipsies never marry but among themselves, and those children which are the offsprings of temporary unions are unmercifully cast out of the tribe. One of the pretensions of the gitanos is that of being good Castilians and good Catholics, but I think that, at bottom, they are, to some extent, Arabs and Mahometans; they deny this fact to the best of their power, from a remnant of fear for the Inquisition which no longer exists. A few deserted and half-ruined streets of the Albaycin are also inhabited by richer or less wandering gipsies. In one of these streets, we perceived a little girl, about eight years old, and entirely naked, dancing the zorongo on a painted paving stone. Her sister, whose features were wan and emaciated, and in whose citron-looking face sparkled eyes of fire, was crouched beside her on the ground, with a guitar, from the strings of which she drew forth a monotonous tinkle by running her thumb over them, and producing music not unsimilar to the husky squeak of the grasshopper. The mother, who was richly dressed, and whose neck was loaded with glass beads, beat time with the end of a blue velvet slipper, which she gazed on with great complacency. The wild attitude, strange accoutrement, and extraordinary colour of this group, would have made a subject for the pencil of Collot, or of Salvator Rosa.

Monte Sagrado, which contains the grottoes of the martyrs who were so miraculously discovered, offers nothing very interesting. It is a convent with a rather ordinary-looking church, beneath which the crypts are dug. These crypts have nothing about them capable of producing any deep impression. They are composed of a complication of small, straight, whitewashed corridors, from seven to eight feet high. In recesses made for the purpose, altars, dressed with more devotion than taste, have been raised. It is there that the shrines and bones of the holy personages are locked up behind the wire-work. I expected to see a subterraneous church, dark and mysterious, nay, even dreadful-looking, with low pillars, and a surbased roof, lighted by the uncertain reflection of a distant lamp,—something, in fact, similar to the ancient catacombs, and great was my surprise at the clean and tidy appearance of this whitewashed crypt, lighted by ventholes like those of a cellar. We somewhat superficial Catholics require something picturesque, in order to get imbued with religious feeling. The devout man thinks little about the effect of light and shade, or about the more or less learned proportions of architecture; he knows, however, that, beneath that altar of so mediocre a form, lie hidden the bones of the saint who died for the sake of the faith which he professes, and that suffices for him.

The Carthusian Convent, at present bereft of monks, like all other convents in Spain, is an admirable edifice, and we cannot regret too much that it has ever ceased to be used for its original purpose. We have never been able to understand what harm could be done by cenobites voluntarily cloistered in a prison, and passing their lives in austerity and prayer, especially in a country like Spain, where there is certainly no lack of ground.

You ascend by a double flight of steps to the doorway of the church: it is surmounted by a white marble statue of St. Bruno, of a rather handsome effect. The decorations of the church are singular, and consist of plaster arabesques, truly wonderful by the variety and richness of their subjects. It appears as if the architect had been desirous of vying, in quite a different style, with the lightness and complication of the lace-work of the Alhambra. There is not a place as large as your hand, in this immense structure, which is not filled with flowers, damask-work, leaves, and guilloches: it would be enough to turn the head of any one who wanted to take an exact sketch of it. The choir is lined with porphyry and costly marble. A few mediocre pictures are hung up here and there along the walls, and make you regret the space they hide. The cemetery is near the church: according to the custom of the Carthusian friars, no tomb, no cross, indicates the place where the departed brothers sleep; but the cells surround the cemetery, and each one is provided with a little garden. In a piece of ground planted with trees, which, no doubt, formerly served as a promenade for the friars, my attention was called to a kind of fish-pond, with a sloping stone edge, in which were awkwardly crawling three or four dozen tortoises, that basked in the sun and appeared quite happy at being henceforth in no danger of the cook's art. The laws of the Carthusian brethren forbade their ever eating meat, and the tortoise is looked on as a fish by casuists. These tortoises were destined to supply the friars' table. The revolution, however, saved them.

While we are about visiting the convents, we will enter, if you please, the Monastery of San Juan de Dios. The cloister is one of the most curious imaginable, and is constructed with frightfully bad taste; the walls, painted in fresco, represent various fine actions of the life of San Juan de Dios, framed with such grotesque and fantastic ornaments as throw into the shade the most extravagant and deformed productions of Japan and China. You behold sirens playing the violin, she-monkeys at their toilet, chimerical fish in still more chimerical waves, flowers which look like birds, birds which look like flowers, lozenges of looking-glass, squares of earthenware, love-knots—in a word, an endless pell-mell of all that is inextricable. The church, which is luckily of another epoch, is gilt nearly all over. The altar-screen, which is supported by pillars of the Solomonic order, produces a rich and majestic effect. The sacristan, who served as our guide, on seeing that we were French, questioned us about our country, and asked if it were true, as was said at Granada, that Nicholas, the Emperor of Russia, had invaded France and taken possession of Paris: such was the latest news. These gross absurdities were spread among the people by the partisans of Don Carlos, in order to obtain credence for an absolutist reaction on the part of the European powers, and to rally, by the hope of speedy assistance, the drooping courage of the disorganized bands.