CHURCH OF SAINT-GUDULE, BRUSSELS
It was three o’clock when I entered Saint-Gudule. They were celebrating the Office of the Virgin. A Madonna, covered with jewels and clothed in a robe of English lace, glittered on a dais of gold in the centre of the nave through a luminous cloud of incense which was dispersed around her. Many people were praying in the shadow motionless, and a strong ray of sunlight from above dispelled the gloom and shone full upon the large statues of proud mien arranged against the columns. The worshippers seemed of stone, the statues seemed alive.
And then a beautiful chant of mingled deep and ringing voices fell mysteriously with the tones of the organ from the highest rails hidden by the mists of incense. I, during this time, had my eye fixed dreamily upon Verbruggen’s pulpit, teeming with life,—that magic pulpit which is always suggestive.—Frame this with windows, ogives, and Renaissance tombs of white marble and black, and you will understand why a sublime sensation was produced by this scene....
I climbed the towers of Saint-Gudule. It was beautiful. The entire city lay beneath me, the toothed and voluted roofs of Brussels half-hidden by the smoke, the sky (a stormy sky), full of clouds, golden and curled above, solid as marble below; in the distance a large cloud from which rain was falling like fine sand from a bag which has burst; the sun shone above everything; the magnificent open-work, lantern-like belfry stood out sombre against the white mists; then the confused noise of the town reached me, then the verdure of the lovely hills on the horizon: it was truly beautiful. I admired everything like a provincial from Paris, which I am,—everything, even the mason who was hammering on a stone and whistling near me.
En Voyage: France et Belgique (Paris, 1892).
THE ESCURIAL.
EDMONDO DE AMICIS.
Before my departure for Andalusia, I went to see the famous Convent of the Escurial, the leviathan of architecture, the eighth wonder of the world, the largest mass of granite upon the earth, and, if you desire other imposing epithets, then you must imagine them, for you will not find one that has not been used to describe it. I left Madrid in the early morning. The village of the Escurial, from which the Convent received its name, is eight leagues from the city, not far from the Guadarrama; you pass through an arid and uninhabited country whose horizon is bounded by snow-covered mountains. A light, fine, and cold rain was falling when I reached the station of the Escurial. From it to the village there is a rise of half a mile. I clambered into an omnibus, and at the end of a few minutes, I was deposited in a solitary street bordered on the left by the Convent and on the right by the houses of the village, and shut in by the mountains. At the first glance you understand nothing; you expect to see a building and you find a city; you do not know if you are already in the Convent, or if you are outside; you are hemmed in by walls. You advance, and find yourself in a square; you look about you and see streets; you have not yet entered, and already the Convent surrounds you: you are at your wit’s end, and no longer know which way to turn. The first feeling is one of depression: the entire edifice is of mud-coloured stone, and all the layers are marked by a white stripe; the roofs are covered with lead. You might call it a building made of earth. The very high walls are naked and pierced by a great number of windows which resemble barbicans. You might call it a prison rather than a convent. You find this gloomy colour everywhere: there is not a living soul here, and the silence is that of a deserted fortress; and beyond the black roofs, the black mountain, which seems to be suspended over the building, gives it mysterious solitude. It seems as if the founder must have chosen the spot, the plan, and the colours, everything, in fact, with the intention of producing a sad and solemn spectacle. You lose your gaiety before entering; you can smile no longer, you are thinking. You pause at the door of the Escurial with a kind of quaking, as if at the entrance of a dead city; it seems to you that if the terrible Inquisition is reigning in any corner of the world, it must be between these walls; for it is here that you can see its last traces and hear its last echo.
THE ESCURIAL.