Wanderings in Spain

Halfway on the road, at the summit of a pretty steep ascent, is a poor isolated house, the only one you meet in the course of eight leagues. Opposite it is a spring, from which a pure and icy stream trickles down, drop by drop; you drink as many glasses of water as the spring contains, let your mules rest a short time, and then set off again on your journey. Soon afterwards you perceive, standing out from the vapoury background of the mountains, and rendered visible by a bright gleam of sunshine, that Leviathan of architecture, the Escurial. At a distance, the effect is very fine; you would almost fancy it to be an immense Oriental palace, the stone cupola and the balls which terminate all the elevated points contributing very much to keep up the illusion. Before reaching it, you pass through a large wood of olive-trees, ornamented with crosses, quaintly planted on large blocks of rocks, and producing the most picturesque effect. On issuing from the wood you enter the village and find yourself before the colossus, which loses a great deal from being viewed closely, like all the other colossi in the world. The first thing that struck me was the great number of swallows and martins, wheeling about in immense swarms, and uttering a sharp, strident cry. The poor little birds appeared terrified by the death-like silence which reigned in this Thebaid, and were endeavouring to impart a little animation and noise to it.

Every one is aware that the Escurial was built in consequence of a vow made by Philip II. at the siege of Saint Quentin, when he was obliged to cannonade a church dedicated to St. Lawrence. Philip promised the Saint that he would make amends for the church of which he deprived him, by one that should be more spacious and more beautiful; and he kept his word more faithfully than the kings of this earth generally do. The Escurial, which was commenced by Juan Bautista and completed by Herrera, is assuredly, with the exception of the Egyptian pyramids, the largest heap of granite that exists upon the face of the globe; it is called, in Spain, the eighth wonder of the world, making, as each country has its own eighth wonder, at least the thirtieth eighth wonder now existing.

I am exceedingly embarrassed in giving an opinion on the Escurial. So many grave and respectable persons, who, I am happy to believe, never saw it, have spoken of it as a chef-d'œuvre and a supreme effort of human genius, that I, who am but a poor, miserable, wandering writer of feuilletons, am afraid that I shall appear to have determined to be original, and seem to take pleasure in contradicting the generally-received opinion. Despite of this, however, I declare conscientiously, and from the bottom of my heart, that I cannot help thinking the Escurial the dullest and most wearisome edifice that a morose monk and a suspicious tyrant could ever conceive for the mortification of their fellow-creatures. I am very well aware that the Escurial was erected for an austere and religious purpose, but gravity does not consist in baldness, melancholy in atrophy, or meditation in ennui; beauty of form can always be united to elevation of ideas.

The Escurial is arranged in the form of a gridiron, in honour of Saint Lawrence. Four towers, or square pavilions, represent the feet of this instrument of torture; four masses of building connect the pavilions with each other, and form the framework, while other cross rows represent the bars; the palace and the church are situated in the handle. This strange notion, which must have hampered the architect very much, is not easily perceived by the eye, although it is very visible upon the printed plan. If the visitor were not told of it, he most certainly would never discover it. I do not blame this symbolical piece of puerility, which suited the taste of the times; for I am convinced that when a certain model is given to an architect, so far from shackling him, it will, provided he has genius, prove of great use and assistance to him, and cause him to have recourse to expedients of which he would, otherwise, never have thought; but it strikes me that, in this case, he might have arrived at a far different result. Those persons who are fond of good taste and sobriety in architecture, must think the Escurial a specimen of perfection, for the only line employed in it is the straight line, and the only order the Doric order, which is the most melancholy and poorest of any.

One thing which immediately strikes you very disagreeably, is the yellow clayish colour of the walls, which you would almost imagine to be built of mud, did not the joints of the stones, marked by lines of glaring white, prove that this was not the case. Nothing can be more monotonous to behold than all these buildings, six or seven stories high, without a moulding, a pilaster, or a column, and with their small low windows, looking like the entrance to a beehive. The place is the very ideal of an hospital, or of barracks: its sole merit consists in its being built of granite, a species of merit which is of no value, since at the distance of a hundred paces the granite may be easily mistaken for the clay of which stoves are made in France. On the top is a heavy dwarfish cupola, which I can compare to nothing more aptly than the dome of the Val de Grâce, and which boasts of no other ornaments than a multitude of granite balls. All around, in order that nothing may be wanting to the symmetry of the whole, are a number of buildings in the same style, that is to say, with a quantity of small windows, and without the least ornament. These buildings are connected with each other by galleries in the form of bridges, thrown over the streets that lead to the village, which, at present, is nothing more than a heap of ruins. All the approaches to the edifice are paved with granite flags, and its limits marked by little walls three feet high, ornamented with the inevitable balls at every angle and every opening. The façade, which does not project in the least from the other portions of the building, fails to break the aridity of the general lines, and is hardly perceived, although it is of gigantic proportions.

The first place you enter is a vast courtyard, at the extremity of which is the portal of a church, presenting no remarkable feature, except some colossal statues of prophets, with gilt ornaments, and figures painted rose-colour. This courtyard is flagged, damp, and cold; the angles are overgrown with grass; you no sooner place your foot in it than you are oppressed with ennui, just as if you had a weight of lead upon your shoulders; you feel your heart contract; you think that all is over – that every joy is henceforth dead for you. At a distance of twenty paces from the door you smell an indescribable icy and insipid odour of holy water and sepulchral caverns, which is borne to you by a current of air loaded with pleurisy and catarrh. Although, outside, there may be thirty degrees of heat, the marrow freezes in your bones; you imagine that the warmth of life will never again be able to cheer the blood in your veins, which has become colder than a viper's blood. The air of the living cannot force its way through the immense thickness of the walls, which are as impenetrable as the tomb, and yet, in spite of this claustral and Moscovitish cold, the first object I beheld, on entering the church, was a Spanish woman kneeling on the ground, beating her breast with one hand, and with the other fanning herself with equal fervour. I recollect that her face had a kind of sea-green tint, which makes me shiver even now, whenever I think of it.

The cicerone who conducted us over the interior of the edifice was blind, and it was really most marvellous to see with what precision he stopped before the pictures, naming the subject of each one, and the artist by whom it was painted, without the least hesitation or mistake. He took us up to the dome, and led us through an infinity of ascending and descending corridors, which rivalled in complication the "Confessional of the Black Penitents," or of the "Château of the Pyrenees," by Anne Radcliffe. The old fellow's name is Cornelio; he was the merriest creature in the world, and appeared quite to take a delight in his infirmity.

The interior of the church is mournful and naked. Immense mouse-grey pilasters formed of granite, with a large micaceous grain like coarse salt, ascend to the roof which is painted in fresco, the blue, vapoury tones of which are ill suited to the cold, poor colour of the architecture; the retablo, gilt and sculptured in the Spanish fashion, with some very fine paintings, somewhat corrects this aridity of decoration, which sacrifices everything to some stupid notion or other of symmetry. The style of the kneeling statues of gilt bronze on each side the retablo, representing, I believe, Don Carlos and some princesses of the royal family, is grand, and the effect is very fine. The chapter which is opposite the high altar is an immense church in itself; the stalls which surround it instead of being florid and decorated with fantastic arabesques, like those at Burgos, partake of the general rigidity, and have no other ornaments than simple mouldings. We were shown the place where for fourteen years the sombre Philip II., that king born to be a grand inquisitor, used to seat himself; it is the stall that forms the angle, and a doorway cut through the thickness of the panelling communicates with the interior of the palace. Without pretending to possess any very fervent amount of devotion, I can never enter a Gothic cathedral without experiencing a mysterious and profound feeling, an extraordinary sentiment of emotion; but in the church of the Escurial I felt so crushed, so depressed, so completely under the dominion of some inflexible and gloomy power, that I was for the moment convinced of the inutility of prayer. The God of such a temple will never allow himself to be moved by any entreaties.

After visiting the church we went down into the Pantheon. This is the name given to the vault where the bodies of the kings of Spain are preserved. It is octagonal in form, thirty-six feet in diameter and thirty-eight feet in height, directly under the high altar; so that when the priest is saying mass, his feet are on the stone which forms the keystone of the vault. The staircase leading into it is formed of granite and coloured marble, and closed by a handsome bronze gate. The pantheon is lined throughout with jasper, porphyry, and other stones no less precious. In the walls there are niches with antique-formed cippi, destined to contain the bodies of those kings and queens who have left issue. A penetrating and death-like coldness reigns throughout the vault, and the polished marble glitters and sparkles in the flickering torchlight; it seems as if the walls were dripping with water, and the visitor might almost imagine himself to be in some submarine grotto. The monstrous edifice weighs you down with all its weight; it surrounds, it embraces, it suffocates you; you feel as if you were clasped by the tentacles of an immense granite polypus. The dead bodies contained in the sepulchral urns seem more dead than any others, and it is with difficulty that you can induce yourself to believe that they can ever possibly be resuscitated. In the vault, as in the church, the impression is one of sinister despair; in all this dreary place there is not one hole through which you can see the sky.

A few good pictures still remain in the Sacristy (the best have been transferred to the Royal Museum at Madrid). Among them are three or four specimens on wood of the German school, possessing a very uncommon degree of merit. The ceiling of the grand staircase is painted in fresco by Luca Jordano, and represents, allegorically, Philip II.'s vow and the foundation of the convent. The acres of wall in Spain painted by this same Luca Jordano, are something truly prodigious, and we moderns who lose our breath at the slightest exertion, find it a difficult task to conceive the possibility of such labours. Pellegrini, Luca, Gangiaso, Carducho, Romulo, Cincinnato, and many others have painted in the Escurial cloisters, vaults, and ceilings. That of the library is the work of Carducho and Pellegrini, and is a good sample of light, clear fresco colouring; the composition is very rich and the twining arabesques in the best possible taste. The library of the Escurial is remarkable for one peculiarity, and that is, that the books are placed on the shelves with their backs to the wall and their edges to the spectator; I do not know the reason of this odd arrangement. The library is particularly rich in Arabic manuscripts, and must contain many inestimable and totally unknown treasures. At present that the conquest of Algiers has rendered Arabic quite a fashionable and ordinary language, it is to be hoped that this rich mine will be thoroughly worked by our young orientalists. The other books appeared to be mostly works of theology and scholastic philosophy. We were shown some manuscripts on vellum, with illuminated margins ornamented with miniatures; but, as it was Sunday, and the librarian was absent, we could not hope for anything else, and we were consequently obliged to depart without having seen a single incunable edition; which, by the way, was a much greater disappointment to my companion than to myself, who, unfortunately, am not an enthusiast in the matter of bibliography, or anything else.

In one of the corridors is placed a white marble Christ the size of life, attributed to Benvenuto Cellini, and some very singular fantastic paintings in the style of the Temptations of Callot and Teniers, only much older. In other respects it is impossible to conceive anything more monotonous than these narrow, low, and interminable corridors of grey granite, which circulate all through the edifice like the veins in the human body; you must really be blind to find your way about them; you go up stairs and down stairs, you make a thousand twistings and turnings, and if you only walked about three or four hours you would wear out the soles of your shoes, for the granite is as rough as a file, and as harsh as so much sand-paper. From the dome you perceive that the balls which, when viewed from below, did not appear larger than horses' bells, are of an enormous size, and might serve as monster globes. An immense panorama unfolds itself at your feet, and you perceive at one glance the hilly country which separates you from Madrid; on the other side you behold the mountains of Guadarrama. From this position, too, you see the whole plan of the building; your eye plunges into the courtyards and cloisters, with their rows of superposed arcades, and their fountain or central pavilion; the roofs appear like so many simple ridges, just as they would in an engraving that gave a bird's-eye view of the place.

When we ascended to the dome, a stork with three little ones was perched in a large straw nest, that resembled a turban turned upside down, placed on the top of one of the chimneys. This interesting family presented the strangest appearance in the world; the mother was standing on one leg in the middle of the nest, with her neck stuck between her shoulders, and her beak reposing majestically upon her breast, like a philosopher in meditation; the little birds were stretching out their long beaks and their long necks to ask for food. I hoped to witness one of those sentimental scenes of natural history, where we see the large white pelican wounding her own breast to nourish her offspring; but the stork appeared to be very little moved by these demonstrations of hunger, and did not move more than the stork engraved on wood which adorns the frontispiece of the books coloured by Cramoisi. This melancholy group increased still more the profound solitude of the place, and imparted a kind of Egyptian character to this Pharaoh-like assemblage of buildings. After descending from the dome, we visited the garden, where there is more architecture than vegetation. It consists of a succession of large terraces and parterres of clipped boxwood, representing a series of designs similar to the patterns of old damask silk, with a few fountains, and pieces of greenish water; it is a wearisome, solemn garden, as formal as a Golilla, and altogether worthy of the morose-looking edifice to which it is attached.

There are said to be one thousand one hundred and ten windows in the exterior of the Escurial alone, a fact which greatly astonishes the cockney visitor. I did not count them, as I preferred believing the report to entering upon an undertaking of such magnitude; but the fact is not improbable, for I never saw so many windows in one place; the number of the doors is equally fabulous.

I took leave of this desert of granite, this monastic necropolis, with an extraordinary feeling of satisfaction and delight; it seemed as if I were restored to life, and that I could once more feel young, and enjoy the wonderful creation of God, which I had lost all hope of doing, while under these funereal vaults. The warm bright air enveloped me as with some soft cloth of fine wool, and warmed my body, that was frozen by the cadaverous atmosphere; I was freed from the architectural nightmare, which I thought would never end. I would advise those people who are absurd enough to pretend that they are suffering from ennui to go and pass three or four days in the Escurial; they will there learn what ennui really means, and, for the rest of their lives, will always find a fund of amusement in the thought that they might be in the Escurial, and that they are not.

When we returned to Madrid, all our acquaintances were astonished and delighted at beholding us once more alive. Very few persons return from the Escurial; they either die of consumption in two or three days, or blow out their brains, – that is, if they are Englishmen. Luckily, we both enjoy a very good constitution; and as Napoleon said of the cannon-ball which was to carry him off, the building that is to kill us is not yet built. Another thing which did not cause less surprise was the fact of our bringing our watches back with us; for in Spain there are always, on the high-road, persons extremely desirous of knowing what o'clock it is; and as there are neither clocks nor even sundials at hand, they are under the painful necessity of consulting travellers' watches.

Talking of robbers, I may as well seize this opportunity of narrating an adventure in which we nearly sustained two of the principal parts. The diligence from Madrid to Seville, by which we should have gone, but from the fact of there being no more room, was stopped in the province of La Mancha by a band of insurgents, or of robbers, which is exactly the same thing. The robbers had divided the spoil, and were on the point of conducting their prisoners into the mountains, in order to obtain a ransom from their families, (would you not suppose that all this happened in Africa?) when another and more numerous band came up, thrashed the first, and robbed them of their prisoners, whom they then definitively marched off into the mountains.

As they were going along the road, one of the travellers drew a cigar-case out of his pocket, which his captors had forgotten to search, takes a cigar, strikes a light, and lights it. "Would you like a cigar?" he says to the chief bandit, with true Castilian politeness; "they are real Havannahs." "Con mucho gusto," replies the bandit, flattered by this mark of attention, and, the next instant, the traveller and the brigand are standing opposite each other, cigar against cigar, puffing and blowing away, in order to light their cigars more quickly. They then commenced a conversation, and, from one thing to another, the robber, like all commercial men, began complaining of business: times were hard, things were in a bad state; many honest people had entered the profession and spoilt it; the robbers were obliged to wait their turn to pillage the miserable diligences, and, very frequently, three or four bands were obliged to fight with one another for the spoil of the same galera, or the same convoy of mules. Besides this, the travellers, who were sure of being robbed, only took with them what was absolutely necessary, and wore their worst clothes. "Just tell me," said he, with a melancholy dejected air, pointing to his cloak, which was threadbare, and patched all over, and which would have been worthy of enveloping Probity in person, "is it not shameful that we should be under the necessity of stealing a rag like this? Is not my jacket one of the most virtuous description? Could the most honest man in the world be dressed more shabbily than I am? It is true that we keep our prisoners as hostages, but relations, now-a-days, are so hard-hearted, that they cannot be induced to loosen their purse-strings, so that, at the expiration of two or three months, we are put to the extra expense of a charge of powder and shot to blow out our prisoners' brains, which is always a very disagreeable thing, when you have got accustomed to their society. In order to do all this, too, we are obliged to sleep on the ground, eat acorns, which are not always palatable, drink melted snow, make tremendous journeys on the most abominable roads, and risk our lives at every moment." So spoke the worthy bandit, more disgusted with his profession than a Parisian journalist, when it is his turn to write a feuilleton. "But," said the traveller, "if your profession does not please you, and brings you in so little, why do you not follow some other?" "I have often thought of doing so," replied the robber, "and so have my comrades as well; but what can we do? We are tracked, pursued, and should be shot down like dogs, if we were to go near a village. No, we must continue the same kind of life." The traveller, who was a man of some influence, remained a moment buried in thought; at last he remarked, "Then you would willingly give up your present calling, if you were allowed to benefit by the indulto (if you were amnestied?)" "Most certainly," answered all the band. "Do you think it is so very amusing to be robbers? We are obliged to work like negroes, and undergo all sorts of hardships." "Very well," replied the traveller; "I will engage to procure you your pardon, on condition that you set us free." "Agreed," replied the captain. "Return to Madrid; there is a horse, some money for your expenses on the road, and a safeconduct, which will ensure our comrades allowing you to pass without molestation. Come back soon; we will be at such and such a place, with your companions, whom we will entertain as well as we can." The gentleman went to Madrid, obtained a promise that the brigands should be allowed to take the benefit of the indulto, and then set out again to seek his companions in misfortune. He found them seated tranquilly with the brigands, eating a Mancha ham boiled in sugar, and taking frequent draughts from a goatskin filled with Val-de-Peñas, which their captors had stolen expressly for them – a most delicate mark of attention, certainly! They were singing and amusing themselves very much, and were more inclined to become robbers, like the others, than to return to Madrid. The captain, however, read them a severe moral lecture, which brought them to their senses, and the whole company set out arm in arm for the city, where both travellers and brigands were enthusiastically received, for it was something truly uncommon and curious for robbers to be taken prisoners by the travellers in a diligence.

CHAPTER IX

EXCURSION TO TOLEDO

Illescas – The Puerta del Sol – Toledo – The Alcazar – The Cathedral – The Gregorian and Mozarabic Ritual – Our Lady of Toledo – San Juan de los Reyes – The Synagogue – Galiana, Karl, and Bradamant – The Bath of Florinda – The Grotto of Hercules – The Cardinal's Hospital – Toledo Blades.

We had exhausted the curiosities of Madrid; we had seen the Palace, the Armeria, and the Buen Retiro, the Museum and the Academy of Painting, the Teatro del Principe, and the Plaza de Toros; we had promenaded on the Prado from the fountain of Cybele to the fountain of Neptune, and we began to find the time hang somewhat heavily on our hands. Consequently, in spite of a heat of thirty degrees,[8 - Eighty degrees Fahrenheit. The author here, as well as all through his works reckons the degree of heat by the thermometer termed "Centigrade."] and all sorts of stories, sufficient to make our hair stand on end, about the insurgents and the rateros, we set out bravely for Toledo, the city of beautiful swords and romantic poniards.

Toledo is one of the most ancient cities not merely in Spain, but in the whole world, if the chroniclers are to be believed. The most moderate of them fix the period of its foundation prior to the Deluge; why not in the time of the Pre-Adamite kings, a few years before the creation of the world? Some attribute the honour of laying the first stone to Tubal; some to the Greeks; some, again, to the Roman consuls Telmon and Brutus; while others, supporting their opinion on the etymology of the word Toledo, which is derived from Toledoth, meaning, in Hebrew, generations, assert that the Jews who came to Spain with Nebuchadnezzar, were the original founders, because the twelve tribes all helped to build and people it. However this may be, Toledo is certainly a fine old city, situated some dozen leagues from Madrid, – Spanish leagues, by the way, which are longer than a feuilleton of a dozen columns, or a day without money – the longest things I know. You can go there either in a calessin or a small diligence which leaves twice a week. The latter conveyance is preferred as being the safer of the two; for on the other side of the Pyrenees, as was formerly the case in France, a person makes his will before undertaking the shortest journey. The terrible reports about brigands must, however, be exaggerated; for, in the course of a very long pilgrimage through those provinces which are considered the most dangerous, we never saw anything which could justify this universal panic. Nevertheless, the continual state of dread adds a great deal to the pleasure of the traveller, for it keeps you continually on the alert, and hinders the time from hanging heavily on your hands; you do some heroic actions, you display a superhuman amount of valour, and the troubled and scared looks of those who are spared raises you in your own estimation. A journey in the diligence, which we are accustomed to look on as the most ordinary thing in the world, becomes an adventure, an expedition; you set out, it is true, but it is not so certain that you will reach your destination, or return from whence you started. After all, this is something, in such an advanced state of civilization as that of modern times, in the prosaic and common-place year, 1840.

You leave Madrid by the gate and bridge of Toledo, which, is adorned with pots, volutes, statues, and pot-grenados of a very ordinary description, but which yet produce rather a majestic effect. You leave on your right the village of Caramanchel, whither Ruy Blas went to procure, for Marie de Neubourg, la petite fleur bleue d'Allemagne (Ruy Blas, now-a-days, would not find the smallest Vergissmeinnicht in this hamlet built of cork on a basement of pumice-stone), and then enter, by a most detestable road, an interminable plain of dust, covered with crops of wheat and rye, whose pale yellow tints increase still more the monotony of the landscape. The only objects which serve to relieve it, in the least, are a few crosses, of evil augury, here and there stretching their skinny arms to the sky, the ends of a few spires in the distance marking the sites of small villages concealed from view, and the dried-up bed of some ravine traversed by a stone arch. From time to time you meet a peasant on his mule, with his carbine slung at his side; a muchacho driving before him two or three asses loaded with jars or chopped straw, secured by small cords, or else some poor tawny, sunburnt woman, dragging along a fierce-looking child, and that is all.

The further we advanced, the more arid and deserted did the country become; and it was not without a secret feeling of satisfaction that we perceived, on a bridge of uncemented stones, the five green dragoons who were to escort us; for it is necessary to have an escort from Madrid to Toledo. Would not a person be almost inclined to believe that he was in the very heart of Algeria, and that Madrid was surrounded by a Mitidja peopled by Bedouins?

We stopped to breakfast at Illescas, a city, or village, I am not certain which, where there are still some remains of the ancient Moorish buildings, and where the windows of the houses are protected by intricate specimens of iron-work and surmounted by a cross.

Our breakfast consisted of soup composed of garlic and eggs, of the inevitable tomata tortilla, and of roasted almonds and oranges, washed down with Val-de-Peñas, which was tolerably good, although thick enough to be cut with a knife, smelling horribly of pitch, and of the colour of mulberry syrup. Spain is certainly not peculiarly brilliant in its cookery, and the hostelries have not been sensibly ameliorated since the time of Don Quixote; the pictures of omelettes full of feathers, of tough cakes, rancid oil, and hard peas that might serve as bullets, are still strictly true, but, on the other hand, I should be rather puzzled to say where you would find, now-a-days, the splendid hens and monstrous geese that graced the marriage-feast of Gamacho.

Beyond Illescas the ground becomes more broken, and the consequence is that the road becomes more abominable, being a mere succession of pits and bogs. This does not prevent you, however, from going along at a furious rate; for Spanish postilions are like Morlachian coachmen, they care very little for what takes place behind them, and provided that they reach their destination, if it is only with the pole and the forewheels, they are satisfied. We arrived, however, without any accident, in the midst of a cloud of dust, raised by our mules and the horses of the dragoons, and made our entry into Toledo, panting with curiosity and thirst, through a most magnificent Arabian gateway, with its elegantly sweeping arch, and granite pillars surmounted by balls, and covered with verses from the Koran. It is called the Puerta del Sol, and is of a rich reddish colour, like a Portugal orange, while the outline stands out admirably from the limpid and azure sky behind. In our foggy climate we can really and truly form no conception of this violence of colour and this sharpness of outline; any paintings that may ever be brought back will always be looked on as exaggerated.

After passing the Puerta del Sol, we found ourselves on a kind of terrace, whence we enjoyed a very extensive view. We saw the Vega, streaked and dappled with trees and crops, which owe their verdure to the system of irrigation introduced by the Moors. The Tagus, which is crossed by the bridge of San Martin and that of Alcantara, rolls its yellowish waters rapidly along, and almost surrounds the town in one of its windings. At the foot of the terrace, the brown, glittering housetops sparkle in the sun, as do also the spires of the convents and churches, with their squares of green and white porcelain arranged like those on a chessboard; beyond these, rise the red hills and bare precipices which form the horizon around Toledo. The great peculiarity of this view is the entire absence of atmosphere and that species of hazy fog which, in our climate, always envelop the prospect; the transparency of the air is such that the lines of the various objects retain all their sharpness, and the slightest detail can be discerned at a very considerable distance.

As soon as our luggage had been examined, our first care was to find some fonda or parador, for it was a long time since we had eaten our eggs at Illescas. We were conducted, through a number of streets so narrow that two loaded asses could not pass abreast, to the fonda del Caballero, one of the most comfortable establishments in the town. Calling to our aid the little Spanish we knew, and indulging in the most pathetic kind of pantomime, we succeeded in explaining to our hostess, who was a most gentle and charming woman, of a highly interesting and lady-like appearance, that we were dying of hunger, a fact which always seems greatly to astonish the natives of the country, who live upon sunshine and air, after the very economical fashion of the chameleon.

The whole tribe of cooks and scullions were immediately in a state of commotion. The innumerable little saucepans in which the highly-spiced ragouts of the Spanish kitchen are distilled and concocted were placed on the fire, and we were promised dinner in an hour's time. We took advantage of this hour to examine the fonda more minutely.

It was a fine building, which had, no doubt, formerly been the residence of some nobleman. The inner courtyard was paved with coloured marble mosaic, and ornamented with wells of white marble and large troughs lined with porcelain for washing the glasses and crockery. This courtyard is called the patio, and is generally surrounded by columns and galleries, with a fountain in the middle. A cloth tendido, which is rolled up in the evening in order to leave a free passage for the cool night-air, serves as a ceiling to this kind of drawing-room. On the first story, all around, there runs an elegantly-worked iron balcony, on which the windows and doors of the apartments open, which apartments you only enter when you wish to dress, dine, or take your siesta. The rest of the time you sit in the courtyard-drawing-room aforesaid, in which the pictures, chairs, sofas, and piano are placed, and which is decked out with flower-pots and boxes containing orange-trees.

We had hardly finished our inspection when Celestina (a fantastic and strange-looking servant-girl) came to inform us, humming a tune all the while, that dinner was ready. It was very respectable, consisting of cutlets, eggs with tomatoes, fowls fried in oil, and trout from the Tagus, to which was added a bottle of Peralta, a warm, liqueur-like wine, with a certain slight perfume of muscat, not at all disagreeable.

When we had finished our repast we strolled through the city, preceded by a guide, who was a barber by profession, but exercised his talents in showing about tourists during his leisure moments.

The streets of Toledo are exceedingly narrow; a person leaning out of a window on one side may shake hands with a person leaning out of a window on the other; and nothing would be more easy than to get over the balconies, if propriety was not preserved and aerial familiarities prevented by very handsome rails and charming iron bars, worked with that artistic richness of which they are so prodigal on the other side of the Pyrenees. This want of breadth would cause all the partisans of civilization among us to cry out in a frightful manner. These good people dream of nothing but immense places, vast squares, inordinately broad streets, and other embellishments more or less progressive. Nothing, however, can be more sensible than narrow streets in a very hot climate; and the architects who are making such large gaps in the buildings at Algiers will find this out very shortly. At the bottom of these narrow divisions so appropriately made between the blocks and masses of houses, you enjoy the most delicious shade and coolness: you walk about, completely protected, in the human polypier called a city; the spoonfuls of molten lead that Phœbus pours down from the sky at the hour of noon never fall upon you; the projecting roofs serve all the purposes of parasols.

If, for your misfortune, you are obliged to traverse any plazuela or calle ancha, exposed to the canicular sunbeams, you will soon appreciate the wisdom of people of former days, who were not accustomed to sacrifice everything to a notion of stupid regularity; the flagstones are as hot as the iron plates by means of which mountebanks make geese and turkeys dance the Cracovienne; the wretched dogs, who possess neither shoes nor alpagartas, gallop over these stones howling most piteously. If you raise the knocker of a door, it burns your fingers; you feel your brains boiling inside your skull like a saucepan full of water on the fire; your nose becomes the colour of a cardinal's hat; your hands are so sunburnt that you seem to have a pair of gloves on; and you evaporate in perspiration. Such is the advantage to be obtained by having spacious squares and broad streets. Every one who has walked along the Calle d'Alcala at Madrid, between twelve and two o'clock in the day, will be of my opinion. Besides, in order to have broad streets, you are obliged to reduce the size of the houses, and the opposite process strikes me as being the more sensible one of the two. Of course, these observations only apply to warm countries, where it never rains, where mud is a chimera, and where carriages are extremely uncommon. Narrow streets in our showery climate would be nothing more or less than so many abominable sewers. In Spain, the women go out on foot in black satin shoes; and, shod in this manner, walk considerable distances; I admire them for this, especially at Toledo, where the pavement is formed of small polished stones, shining and pointed, and which seem to have been carefully placed with the sharpest end upwards; but the women's little arched and nervous feet are as hard as a gazelle's hoof, and they skip along in the most good-humoured manner imaginable, over this pavement resembling the edge of a diamond, which causes the traveller, who is accustomed to the soft luxury of the Asphalte Seyssel, and the elasticity of the Bitume Polonceau, to cry out with pain.

The appearance of the houses of Toledo is imposing and severe; they have very few windows looking out upon the street, and those they do have are generally secured by iron bars. The doors, ornamented by pillars of bluish granite, and surmounted by balls, a kind of decoration which is very common, have an air of solidity and thickness which is increased still more by constellations of enormous nails. They seem to partake, at the same time, of the nature of convents, prisons, and fortresses, and also somewhat of harems, for the Moors used once to be there. Some of these houses, by a strange contradiction, are painted and decorated on the outside, either in fresco or water-colours, with false bas-reliefs, cameos, flowers, rockwork, and garlands, with incense-urns, medallions, Cupids, and all the mythological rubbish of the last century. The Trumeau and Pompadour style of these houses produces the strangest and most comical effect in the midst of their scowling sisters of feudal or Moorish origin.

We were conducted through an inextricable labyrinth of small lanes, in which my companion and myself marched in Indian file, like the geese in the fable, because there was not sufficient room for us to walk arm-in-arm, until we reached the Alcazar, which is situated like an Acropolis on the most elevated piece of ground in the city. We succeeded in entering after some slight discussion; for the first impulse of people of whom you ask anything is to refuse, whatever your request may be. "Come again this evening, or to-morrow – the keeper is taking his siesta – the keys are lost – you must have a pass from the governor." Such are the answers you obtain at first: but, by exhibiting the all-powerful tiny piece of silver, or, in extreme cases, the glittering duro, you always end by effecting an entrance.

The Alcazar, which was built upon the ruins of the old Moorish palace, is now a perfect ruin itself. It might be mistaken for one of those marvellous architectural dreams which Piranese used to embody in his magnificent etchings; it is the work of Covarubias, an artist little known, but far superior to the heavy, dull Herrera, who enjoys a far higher reputation than he deserves.

The façade, which is ornamented with florid arabesques in the purest style of the Renaissance, is a masterpiece of elegance and nobleness. The burning sun of Spain, which reddens the marble and dyes the stone with a tint of saffron, has clothed it in a robe of rich, strong colour, very different from the black leprosy with which past centuries have encrusted our old edifices. According to the expression of a great poet; Time, who is so intelligent, has passed his thumb over the angles of the marble and its too rigid outlines, and given the finishing touch, the last degree of polish, to this sculpture, already so soft and so supple. I particularly remember a staircase of the most fairy-like elegance, with marble columns, balustrades and steps, already half-crumbled away, conducting to a door which looks out upon an abyss, for this portion of the edifice has fallen down. This admirable staircase on which a king might be content to live, and which leads to nothing, possesses a certain indefinite air of singularity and grandeur.

The Alcazar is erected upon an esplanade, surrounded by battlements in the Moorish style, from which you enjoy an immense view, a truly magical panorama. Here the cathedral pierces the sky with its extraordinarily lofty spire; further on, in the sunshine, sparkles the church of San Juan de los Reyes; the bridge of Alcantara, with its tower-like gateway, throws its bold arches across the Tagus; the Artificio de Juanello obstructs the stream with its arcades of red brick, which might be taken for the ruins of some Roman edifice, while the massive towers of the Castillo of Cervantes (a Cervantes who has nothing in common with the author of Don Quixote) perched upon the rugged, misshapen rocks that run along the sides of the river, add one denticulation more to the horizon already so profusely indented by the vertebrated mountain-crests.

An admirable sunset completed the picture: the sky, by the most imperceptible gradations, passed from the brightest red to an orange colour, and then to a pale lemon tint in order to become of a strange blue, like a greenish turquoise, which last tint subsided in the west into the lilac-colour of night, whose shadow already cast a coolness over the place where I stood.

As I leant over one of the embrasures, taking a bird's-eye view of this town where I knew no one and where my own name was completely unknown, I had fallen into a deep train of thought. In the presence of all these forms and all these objects that I beheld at that moment, and which, in all probability, I was destined never to behold again, I began to entertain doubts of my own identity; I felt so absent, as it were, from myself, transported so far from my own sphere, that everything appeared an hallucination of my mind, a strange dream, from which I should be suddenly awakened by the sharp squeaking music of some vaudeville, as I was looking out of a box at the theatre. By one of those leaps which our imagination often takes when we are buried in reverie, I tried to picture to myself what my friends might be doing at that moment; I asked myself whether they noticed my absence, and whether at the time I was leaning over the battlements of the Alcazar of Toledo, my name was hovering on the lips of some well-loved and faithful friend at Paris. Apparently the answer that my thoughts gave me was not an affirmative one, for in spite of the scene I felt an indescribable feeling of sadness come over me, though the dream of my whole life was being accomplished; I knew that one of my fondest ideas was being fulfilled; in my youthful, happy years of romanticism, I had spoken enough of my good Toledo blade to feel some curiosity to see the place where these same blades were manufactured.

Nothing, however, could rouse me from my philosophical meditations, until my companion came and proposed that we should bathe in the Tagus. Bathing is rather a rare peculiarity in a country where, during the summer, the natives water the beds of the rivers with water from the wells. Trusting to the assurances of the guide that the Tagus was a real river, possessing a sufficient amount of humidity to answer our purpose, we descended as quickly as we could from the Alcazar, in order to profit by what little daylight still remained, and directed our steps towards the stream. After crossing the Plaza de la Constitucion, which is surrounded by houses whose windows, furnished with large spartum blinds rolled up, or half raised by the projecting balconies, have a sort of Venetian mediæval look that is highly picturesque, we passed under a handsome Arabic gateway with its semicircular brick arch, and following a very steep and abrupt zigzag path, winding along the rocks and walls which serve Toledo as a girdle, we reached the bridge of Alcantara, near which we found a place suited for bathing.

During our walk, night, which succeeds the day so rapidly in southern climates, had set in completely; but this did not hinder us from wading blindfold into this estimable stream, rendered famous by the languishing ballad of Queen Hortense, and by the golden sands which are contained in its crystal waves, according to the poets, the guides, and the travellers' handbooks.

When we had taken our bath, we hurried back in order to get into the town before the gates were shut. We enjoyed a glass of Orchata de Chufas and iced milk, the flavour and perfume of which were delicious, and then ordered our guide to take us to our fonda.

The walls of our room, like those of all the rooms in Spain, were rough-cast, and covered with those stupid yellow pictures, those mysterious daubs, like alehouse signs, which you so frequently meet in the Peninsula, a country that contains more bad pictures than any other in the world: this observation, of course, does not detract from the merit of the good ones.

We hastened to sleep as much and as quickly as possible, in order to be up early the next morning and visit the Cathedral before the service began.

The Cathedral of Toledo is considered, and justly so, as one of the finest and richest in Spain. Its origin is lost in the night of time, but, if the native authors are to be believed, it is to be traced back to the apostle Santiago, first archbishop of Toledo, who, according to them, pointed out its site to his disciple and successor, Elpidius, who was a hermit on Mount Carmel. Elpidius erected, on the spot pointed out, a church, which he dedicated to the Virgin during the time she was still living at Jerusalem. "What a notable piece of happiness! what an illustrious honour for the Toledans! It is the most excellent trophy of their glory!" exclaims, in a moment of lyrical inspiration, the author from whom we have taken these details.

The Holy Virgin was not ungrateful, and, according to the same legend, descended in person to visit the church of Toledo, bringing with her own hands, to the blessed San Ildefonso, a beautiful chasuble formed of heavenly cloth. "See how this Queen pays what she owes!" exclaims our author again. The chasuble still exists, and, let into the wall, is seen the stone on which the Virgin placed the sole of her celestial foot, the mark of which remains. The miracle is attested by the following inscription: —

QUANDO LA REINA DEL CIELO