"Do me a favor?"
"A hundred."
"Only one: shut your eyes and don't open them until I tell you."
"Well, they are shut."
"See that you keep them so; I sha'n't like it if you open them."
"Never fear."
Gongora took me by the hand and led me forward: I trembled like a leaf.
We took about fifteen steps and stopped.
"Look!" said Gongora in an agitated voice.
I looked, and I swear by the head of my reader I felt two tears
trickling down my cheeks.
We were in the Court of the Lions.
If at that moment I had been obliged to go out as I had come in, I
could not have told what I had seen. A forest of columns, a vision of
arches and tracery, an indefinable elegance, an unimaginable delicacy,
prodigious wealth; an irrepressible sense of airiness, transparency,
and wavy motion like a great pavilion of lace; an appearance as of
an edifice which must dissolve at a breath; a variety of lights and
mysterious shadows; a confusion, a capricious disorder, of little
things; the grandeur of a castle, the gayety of a summer-house; an
harmonious grace, an extravagance, a delight; the fancy of an enamored
girl, the dream of an angel; a madness, a nameless something,--such is
the first effect of the Court of the Lions.
The court is not larger than a great ball-room; it is rectangular in
form, with walls no higher than a two-storied Andalusian cottage.
A light portico runs all around, supported by very slender white
marble columns grouped in symmetrical disorder, two by two and three
by three, almost without pedestals, so that they are like the trunks
of trees standing on the ground: they have varied capitals, high and
graceful, in the form of little pilasters, above which bend little
arches of very graceful form, which do not seem to rest upon the
columns, but rather to be suspended over them like curtains upholding
the columns themselves and resembling ribbons and twining garlands.
From the middle of the two shortest sides advance two groups of
columns forming two little square temples of nine arches in the form
of stalactites, fringes, pendants, and tassels that seem as though
they ought to swing and become tangled with the slightest breeze.
Large Arabian inscriptions run along the four walls, over the arches,
around the capitals, and along the walls of the little temple. In the
middle of the court rises a great marble basin supported by twelve
lions and surrounded by a paved channel, from which flow four other
smaller channels that make a cross between the four sides of the
court, cross the portico, enter the adjoining rooms, and join the
other water-courses which surround the entire edifice. Behind the two
two little temples and in the middle of the other two sides there
appear halls and suites of rooms with great open doors, through which
one can see the dark background broken by the white columns, gleaming
as if they stood at the mouth of a grotto. At every step the forest
of columns seems to move and rearrange itself in a new way; behind
a column that is apparently single spring up two, three, a row of
columns; some fade away, others unite, and still others separate:
on looking back from the end of one of the halls everything appears
different; the arches on the opposite side seem very far away; the
columns appear out of place; the little temples have changed their
form; one sees new arches rising beyond the walls, and new columns
gleaming here in the sunlight, there in the shadow, yonder scarcely
visible by the dim light which sifts through the tracery of the stucco,
and the farthest lost in the darkness. There is a constant variety of
scene, distance, deceptive effects, mysteries, and playful tricks of
the eye, produced by the architecture, the sun, and one's heightened
imagination.
"What must this _patio_ have been," said Gongora, "when the inner
walls of the portico were resplendent with mosaics, the capitals of
the columns flashed with gold, the ceilings and vaults were painted
in a thousand colors, the doors hung with silken curtains, the niches
full of flowers, and under the little temples and through the halls ran
streams of perfumed water, and from the nostrils of the lions spurted
twelve jets which fell into the basin, and the air was heavy with the
most delicious perfumes of Arabia!"
We remained in the court over an hour, and the time passed like a
flash; and I too did what all have done in that place--Spaniards and
foreigners alike, men and women, poets and those who are not poets. I
ran my hand along the walls, touched all the little columns, clasped
them one by one with my two hands like the waist of a child, hid among
them, counted them, looked at them from a hundred directions, crossed
the court in a hundred ways; tried if it were true that by speaking a
word in a deep voice in the mouth of one of the lions you could hear
it distinctly from the mouths of all the others; searched along the
marbles for the blood-spots of the romantic legends, and wearied my
eyes and brain in following the arabesques. There were a number of
ladies present. In the Court of the Lions ladies show every sort of
childish delight: they look out between two twin columns, hide in the
dark corners, sit on the floor, and stand for hours motionless, resting
their heads upon their hands, dreaming. These ladies did likewise.
There was one dressed in white who, as she passed behind the distant
columns, when she thought no one saw her assumed a certain majestic
air, like a melancholy sultana, and then laughed with one of her
friends: it was enchanting.
"Let us go," said my friend.
"Let us go," I replied, and could not move a step. I was experiencing
not only a delightful sense of surprise, but I was trembling with
pleasure, and was filled with a longing to touch, to probe, and in some
way to see behind those walls and those columns, as if they were made
of some secret material and ought to disclose in their inmost part the
first cause of the fascination which the place exerts. In all my life I
have never thought or said, or shall ever say, so many fond words, so
many foolish expressions, so many pretty, happy, senseless things, as I
thought and said at that hour.
"But one must come here at sunrise," said Gongora, "one must come at
sunset, or at night when the moon is full, to see the miracles of
color, light, and shade. It is enough to make one lose one's head."
We went to see the halls. On the eastern side is the Hall of Justice,
which is reached by passing under three great arches, each of which
corresponds with a door opening into the court. It is a long, narrow
hall, with intricate arabesques and precious mosaics, and its vaulted
ceiling all points and hollows and clusters of stucco that hang down
from the arches and run along the walls, clustered together here and
there, drooping, growing one out of the other, crowding and overtopping
each other, so that they seem to dispute the space like the bubbles
in boiling water, and still presenting in many parts traces of old
colors that must have given the ceiling the appearance of a pavilion
covered with flowers and hanging fruit. The hall has three little
alcoves, in each of which one may see a Moorish painting, to which time
and the extreme rarity of works remaining from the brush of Moorish
artists have given a very high value. The paintings are on leather,
and the leather is fastened to the wall. In the central alcove there
are painted on a golden ground ten men, supposed to be ten kings of
Granada, clothed in white, with cowls on their heads and scimitars in
their hands, sitting on embroidered cushions. The paintings in the
other two alcoves represent castles, ladies and cavaliers, hunting
scenes, and love episodes whose significance it is difficult to
understand. But the faces of the ten kings are marvellously true to
the picture one has formed of their race: there is the dark olive
complexion, the sensuous lips, the black eyes, with an intense
mysterious glance that seems always to be shining in the dark corners
of the halls of the Alhambra.
On the north side of the court there is another hall, called the
hall _De las dos Hermanas_ (of the two sisters), so called from two
great marble slabs which form the pavement. It is the most beautiful
hall in the Alhambra--a little square arched room, with one of those
ceilings in the form of a cupola which the Spaniards call half oranges,
supported by slender columns and arches arranged in a circle, all
adorned, like a grotto full of stalactites, with an infinite number
of points and hollows, colored and gilded, and so light to the view
that it seems as if they are suspended in the air, and would tremble
at a touch like a curtain or separate like a cloud or disappear like
a cluster of soap-bubbles. The walls, like those of all the other
halls, are bedecked with stucco and carved with arabesques incredibly
intricate and delicate, forming one of the most marvellous works of
human patience and imagination. The more one looks, the more numberless
become the lines which blend and cross, and from one figure springs
another, and from that a third, and all three produce a fourth that
has escaped the eye, and this divides suddenly into ten other figures
that have passed unnoticed, and then they mingle again and are again
transformed; and one never ceases to discover new combinations, for
when the first reappear they are already forgotten, and produce the
same effect as at the beginning. One would lose sight and reason in
trying to comprehend that labyrinth: it would require an hour to
study the outlines of a window, the ornaments of a pilaster, and the
arabesques of a frieze; an hour would not be sufficient to fix upon
the mind the design of one of the stupendous cedar doors. On either
side of the hall there are two little alcoves, and in the centre a
little basin with a pipe for a fountain that empties into the channel
that crosses the portico and flows to the Fountain of the Lions.
Directly opposite the entrance there is another door, through which one
passes into another long, narrow room called the Hall of the Oranges.
And from this hall, through a third door, one enters a little chamber
called the Cabinet of Lindaraja, very richly ornamented, at the end of
which there is a graceful window with two arches overlooking a garden.
To enjoy all the beauty of this magical architecture one must leave the
Hall of the Two Sisters, cross the Court of the Lions, and enter a room
called the Hall of the Abencerrages, which lies on the southern side,
opposite the Hall of the Two Sisters, to which it is very similar in
form and ornamentation. From the end of this hall one looks across the
Court of the Lions through the Hall of the Two Sisters into the Hall
of the Oranges and even into the Cabinet of Lindaraja and the garden
beyond, where a mass of verdure appears under the arches of that jewel
of a window. The two sides of this window, so diminutive and full of
light when seen in the distance from the end of that suite of darkened
rooms, look like two great open eyes, that look at you and make
you imagine that beyond them must lie the unfathomable mysteries of
paradise.
After seeing the Hall of the Abencerrages we went to see the baths,
which are situated between the Hall of the Two Sisters and the Court
of the Myrtles. We descended a flight of stairs, passed a long narrow
corridor, and came out into a splendid hall called the hall _De las
Divans_, where the favorites of the king came to rest on their Persian
rugs to the sound of the lyre after they had bathed in the adjoining
rooms. This hall was reconstructed on the plans of the ancient ruins,
and adorned with arabesques, gilded and painted, by Spanish artists
after the ancient patterns; consequently one may consider it a room of
the Moorish period remaining intact in every part. In the middle is a
fountain, and in the opposite walls are two alcoves where the women
reposed on divans, and overhead the galleries where the musicians
played. The walls are laced, dotted, checkered, and mottled with a
thousand brilliant hues, presenting the appearance of a tapestry of
Chinese stuff shot with golden threads, with an endless interweaving of
figures that must have maddened the most patient mosaic-worker on earth.
Nevertheless, a painter was at work in the hall. He was a German who
had worked for three months in copying the walls. Gongora knew him, and
asked, "It is wearisome work, is it not?"
And he answered with a smile, "I don't find it so," and bent again over
his picture.