The faces are both portraits, and have a simple dignity which arrests the attention of the most unobservant. A low door and a few steep steps below the monuments lead to their last resting-place. The royal coffins are of lead, lapped over, rude and plain (only the letter F distinguishes that of the king), but they are genuine, and untouched since the day when their bodies, so justly revered by the Spaniards, were deposited in this humble vault. Among the treasures of this chapel are likewise shown the identical royal standards used at the conquest of Granada; the kings sword; the queen's own missal; their crosier and crown of silver-gilt; the picture of the Virgin and Child by St. Luke, given to Isabella by Pope Innocent VIII., and before which mass is said every 2d of January, the anniversary of the taking of the city; and the portrait of the knight who, during the siege, rode into Granada, and affixed a taper and an "Ave Maria" on the very door of the principal mosque. In the sacristy is a "Conception," exquisitely carved, by Alonso Caño; an "Adoration of the Kings," by Hemling, of Bruges; a curious ring of Sixtus II.; a chasuble embroidered by Queen Isabella; some very valuable relics and reliquaries, and a letter of St. Charles Borromeo, which the good-natured dean allowed one of the party to copy. Besides these treasures, and the Capilla de los Reyes, there is really nothing to look at in the cathedral, but one or two good painted glass windows, some clustered columns, and a curious arch in the dome, which was made to bend downward.
The following morning, after an early service at the Capuchin convent of St. Antonio, one of the party started on an expedition with the sisters of the town, and winding up a beautiful and steep ravine, in the holes and caverns of which gypsies live and congregate, they came to a picturesque wood planted on the side of the mountain. Here they left their carriages, and scrambled up a zigzag path cut in the hill, with low steps or "gradini," till they reached a plateau, on which stands both convent and church. The view from the terrace in front is the most magnificent which can be conceived. On one side are the snowy mountains of the Sierra Nevada, with a rapid river tumbling into the gorge below, the valleys being lined on both sides with stone-pine woods, amid which little convents and villages are clustered. On the other is the town of Granada, with its domes and towers; and sharply standing out on the rocks above the ruins, against the bright blue sky, are the coffee-colored towers of the beautiful Alhambra. There is a Via Crucis up to this spot, the very crosses seeming to start up out of the rocks, which are clothed with aloes and prickly pear; while in the centre of the terrace is a beautiful fountain and cross, shaded by magnificent cypresses. The church is built over some catacombs, where the bodies of St. Cecilia and eleven other martyrs were found, who suffered in the persecution under Nero. The superior of this convent, now converted into a college, is Don José Martin, a very holy man, though quite young, and revered by the whole country as a saint. He is a wonderful preacher, and by his austere and penitential life works miracles in bringing souls to God. His manner is singularly gentle, simple, and humble. He kindly came to escort the party through the catacombs, and to show them the relics. The sites of the different martyrdoms have been converted into small chapels or oratories: in one, where the victim perished by fire, his ashes still remain. Little leaden tablets mark the different spots. Here also is the great wooden cross of St. John of the Cross, from the foot of which he preached a sermon on the "Love of God" during his visit to Granada, which is said to have converted upward of three thousand people. "I always come here to pray for a few minutes before preaching," said simply Don José Martin, "so that a portion of his spirit may rest upon me." After spending some time in this sanctuary, the party reluctantly retraced their steps, and returned to the town, where they had promised to visit the great hospital of San Juan de Dios. It is a magnificent establishment, entirely under the care of the Spanish sisters of charity of St. Vincent de Paul, with a "patio" or quadrangle in the centre, and double cloisters round, into which the wards open: all round the cloisters are frescoes describing different scenes in the life of the saint. The church is gorgeous in its decorations, and in a chapel above rests the body of San Juan, in a magnificent silver shrine, with his clothes, his hat, the basket in which he used daily to go and collect food for his sick and dying poor, and other like personalities.
This saint is immensely revered in Granada. He was the first founder of the order of Brothers of Charity, now spread all over Europe, beginning his great work, as all saints have done, in the humblest manner possible, by hiring a small house (now converted into a wayside oratory), in which he could place four or five poor people, nursing them himself night and day, and only going out to beg, sell, and chop wood, or do anything to obtain the necessary food and medicines for them. The archbishop, touched with his burning charity, assisted him to build a larger hospital. This house soon after took fire, when San Juan carried out the sick one by one on his back, without receiving any hurt. It is thus that he is represented in the Statue Gallery of Madrid. The people, inflamed by his loving zeal, and in admiration of his great wisdom, humility, and prudence, came forward as one man to help him to build the present hospital, which remains to this day as a monument of what may be done by one poor man of humble birth, if really moved by the love of God. His death was caused by rescuing a man in danger of drowning from the sudden rising of the river, and then remaining, wet and worn out as he was, while caring for the family. He died on his knees, repeating the "Miserere," amidst the tears of the whole city, to whom, by the special command of the archbishop, he gave his dying benediction. His favorite saying was: "Labor without intermission to do all the good works in your power while time is allowed you;" and this sentence is engraved in Spanish on the door of the hospital.
The following day happened to be the anniversary of his death, or rather of his birthday in heaven, when a touching and beautiful ceremonial is observed. The archbishop and his clergy come to the hospital to give the holy communion to the sick in each ward. A procession is formed of the ecclesiastics and the sisters of charity, each bearing lighted tapers, and little altars are arranged at the end of each ward, beautifully decorated with real flowers, while everything in and about the hospital is fresh and clean for the occasion. A touching incident occurred in the male ward on that day, where one poor man lay in the last stage of disease. The eagerness of his look when the archbishop drew near his bed will never be forgotten by those who were kneeling there; nor the way in which his face lighted up with joy when he received his Lord. The attendant sister bent forward to give him a cordial afterward: he shook his head, and turned his face away; he would have nothing after that. Before the last notes of the "Pange Lingua" or the curling smoke of the incense had died out of the ward, all was over; but the smile on the lips and the peace on the face spoke of the rest he had found. Afterward there was a magnificent service in the church, and a dinner to all the orphans in the sisters' schools.
Another interesting expedition made by our travellers was to the Carthusian convent outside the town. Sebastiani desecrated and pillaged the wonderful treasures it contained; but the tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl doors and presses remain, reminding one of those in the Armenian church at Jerusalem, at the shrine of St. James. There are also two statues of St. Bruno, by Alonso Caño; wonderful for their life-like appearance and expression, but still not equal to the incomparable one at Miraflores. There are some beautiful alabaster and agate pillars still left in the chapel behind the high altar, which it is to be supposed were too heavy for the spoilers to carry off. In the cloister are some curious frescoes of the martyrdoms of the Carthusians, at the time of the Protestant Reformation, by Henry VIII. of England. The guide who accompanied our travellers said slyly to the only Catholic of the party: "We had better not explain the subject of these. Let them imagine they are some of the horrors of of the Inquisition—that always takes with English people!" Another picture was startling both in subject and coloring; it was that of a dead doctor, much venerated in life, who, on a funeral panegyric being pronounced over him, started from his coffin, exclaiming that "his life had been a lie, and that be was among the damned!" The friar who showed our party over the now deserted convent was like Fray Gabriel in Fernan Caballero's novel of La Gaviota. When the rest of the Carthusians were turned out by the government, he would not go. "I was brought here as a little child," he said, "and know no one in the world;" and so he sat himself down by the cross and sobbed. They let him stay and keep the garden and the church, but his life is over. "The blood does not run in his veins—it walks!" Like Fray Gabriel, he will die kneeling before the Christ to whom he daily prays for those who have so cruelly wronged and robbed him. The view from the terrace in front of the church is beautiful, overlooking the rich and cultivated plain of Soto de Roma, the property of the Duke of Wellington, with the mountain of Parapanda above, the hills of Elvira, and the pass of Moelin, which forms the bridle-road to Cordova. The gardens also are delightful: no wonder the poor monks clung to their convent home!
In the afternoon our travellers walked up to the Generalife, a villa now belonging to the Panavicini family, a branch of the great Genoa house, but formerly the palace of the Sultana. Passing through vineyards and fig-trees, they arrived at the gate of the fairy garden, with its long straight borders, fringed with myrtle, irrigated by the Darro, which is carried in a little canal between the flower-beds, and with a beautiful open colonnade overlooking the Alhambra, while a less formal garden sent up a shower of sweet scents from the orange trees and jessamine trellises below. Through this colonnade they passed into the living-rooms, exquisite in their Moorish carvings and decorations. In one of them there are a number of curious though somewhat apocryphal portraits, including one of Boabdil, and of another Moorish king of Granada, with his wife and daughter, who turned Christians, and were baptized at Santa Fé. In the outer room are portraits of an the "bluest blood" of Granada. But the gardens form the greatest charm. The ground was covered with Neapolitan violets and other spring flowers. Roses climbed over every wall, and magnificent cypresses, and aloes in full flower, shaded the beds from the burning sun. The largest of these cypresses, called the Sultana, is twelve feet in circumference, and to this tree the fatal legend of the fair Zoraya is attached. Behind these cypresses is a flight of Italian-looking steps, leading to another raised garden, full of terraces and fountains. On the steep brow of the hill is an alcove, or summer-house, from whence the views over Granada and the Alhambra are quite enchanting, every arch being, as it were, the setting or frame of a new and beautiful picture. Above this again, is a Moorish fortress, and a knoll called the Moors Chair, from whence the last Moorish king is said to have sadly contemplated the defeat of his troops by the better-disciplined armies of Ferdinand and Isabella grouped in the plains below. Scrambling still higher up, our travellers came to the ruins of a chapel, and to some curious caverns, with a peep into a wild gorge to the right leading into the very heart of this mountainous and little-visited region. Boabdil's sword, and other relics and pictures of the fifteenth century belonging to the Pallavicini family, are carefully preserved by their agent in their house in the town, and had been courteously shown to our travellers when they called to obtain permission to visit the villa. Returning toward their hotel, they thought they would prolong their walk by visiting the great cemetery, or "Campo Santo," which is a little to the north of the Generalife. Long files of mourners had been perpetually passing by their windows, the bier being carried on men's shoulders, and uncovered, as in the East, so that the face of the dead was visible. Each bier was followed by the confraternity to which he or she belonged, chanting hymns and litanies as they wound up the long steep hill from the town to the burial-ground. But all appearance of reverence, or even of decency, disappears at the spot itself, where the corpse is stripped, taken out of its temporary coffin, and brutally cast into a pit, which is kept open till filled, and then, with quicklime thrown in, closed up, and a fresh one opened to be treated in a similar manner. It is a disgrace to Catholic Spain that such scenes should be of daily recurrence.
Another villa worth visiting in the neighborhood of the Alhambra is that of Madame Calderon, where the obliging French gardener took our travellers all over the gardens and terraces, the hot houses and aviaries, the artificial streams and bridges, till they came to the great attraction of the place— a magnificent arbor-vitae, or hanging cypress, falsely called a cedar of Lebanon, which was planted by St. John of the Cross, this site being originally occupied by a convent of St. Theresa's. The house is thoroughly comfortable inside, with charming views over the "vega," and altogether more like an English house than anything else in Spain. If anyone wished to spend a delightful summer out of England, they could find no more agreeable retreat; perfect as to climate, and with the most enjoyable and beautiful expeditions to be made in every direction. It is worth remembering, as Madame Calderon, being now a widow, is anxious to let her residence, having another house in Madrid. There is a church close by, and a dairy attached to the garden, which is a rarity in Spain, and a public benefit to the visitors at the Alhambra; and the clever and notable French wife of the gardener makes delicious butter, and sells both that and the cream in her mistress's absence—luxuries utterly unknown anywhere else in the Peninsula.
Bad weather and heavy snow (for they had visited Granada too early in the year) prevented our travellers from accomplishing different expeditions which they had planned for the ascent of the Sierra Nevada, and visiting Alhama and Adea, and other interesting spots in the neighborhood. But they drove one day to the Alameda, where all Granada congregates in the evening, and from whence the view looking on the mountains is beautiful.
Returning by the Moorish gateway, called the Puerta de Monayma, they came to an open space, in the centre of which is a statue of the Virgin. Here public executions used to take place, and here, in 1881, Mariana Pineda, a lady of high birth and great beauty, was strangled. A simple cross marks the spot. Her crime was the finding in her house a flag, maliciously placed there by a man whose addresses she had rejected.