Julien, like myself, takes his last view of Africa at Carthage[708].
Julien briefly narrates our passage from Tunis to the Bay of Gibraltar; from Algeciras he promptly arrives at Cadiz, and from Cadiz at Granada. Careless of Blanca, he observes only that "the Alhambra and other lofty buildings stand on rocks of immense height." My own Itinéraire does not give many more details on Granada; I content myself with saying:
"The Alhambra seems to me to be worthy of note, even after the temples of Greece. The valley of Granada is delightful, and much resembles that of Sparta: it is easy to conceive that the Moors regret so fine a country."
I have described the Alhambra in the Dernier des Abencerages.[709] The Alhambra, the Generalife, the Monte-Santo are impressed upon my mind like those fantastic landscapes of which often, at peep of day, one imagines that one catches a glimpse in the first brilliant ray of the dawn. I still feel that I possess sufficient sense of nature to paint the Vega[710]; but I should not dare to attempt it, for fear of "the Archbishop of Granada[711]." During my stay in the town of the sultanas, a guitar-player, driven by an earthquake from a village through which I had just passed, had devoted himself to me. Deaf as a post, he followed me wherever I went: when I sat down on a ruin in the Palace of the Moors, he stood and sang by my side, accompanying himself on his guitar. The harmonious vagrant would not perhaps have composed the symphony of the Creation[712], but his dusky skin showed through his tattered cloak, and he would have had a great need to write as did Beethoven[713] to Fraülein Breuning:
"Revered Eleonora, my dearest friend, how gladly would I be the possessor of a rabbits'-wool waistcoat of your knitting."
I travelled from end to end of that Spain in which, sixteen years later, Heaven reserved to me a great part, that of aiding in stamping out anarchy in a noble nation and delivering a Bourbon: the honour of our arms was restored, and I should have saved the Legitimacy, had the Legitimacy been able to understand the conditions of its continuance.
Julien does not allow me to escape until he has brought me back to the Place Louis XV. at three o'clock in the afternoon of the 5th of June 1807. From Granada he conducts me to Aranjuez, to Madrid, to the Escurial, whence he jumps to Bayonne.
"We left Bayonne," he says, "on Tuesday the 9th of May, for Pau, Tarbes, Barèges and Bordeaux, where we arrived on the 18th, very tired, and both with a touch of fever. We left on the 19th and went to Angoulême and Tours, and we arrived on the 28th at Blois, where we slept. On the 31st we continued our journey to Orleans, and later we spent our last night at Angerville."
*
Back in France.