We entered the little bathing-chambers, vaulted and lighted from above
by some star-and flower-shaped apertures in the wall. The bathing-tubs
are very large, single blocks of marble enclosed between two walls. The
corridors which lead from one room to the other are low and narrow,
so that a man can scarcely pass through them; they are delightfully
cool. As I stood looking into one of these little rooms I was suddenly
impressed with a sad thought.
"What makes you sad?" asked my friend.
"I was thinking," I replied, "of how we live, summer and winter, in
houses like barracks, in rooms on the third floor, which are either
dark or else flooded with a torrent of light, without marble, without
water, without flowers, without columns; I was thinking that we
must live so all our lives and die between those walls without once
experiencing the delights of these charmed palaces; I was thinking that
even in this wretched earthly life one may enjoy vastly, and that I
shall not share this enjoyment at all; I was thinking that I might have
been born four centuries ago a king of Granada, and that I was born
instead a poor man."
My friend laughed, and, taking my arm between his thumb and finger, as
if to give me a pinch, he said, "Don't think of that. Think of how much
beauty, grace, and mystery these tubs must have seen; of the little
feet that have played in their perfumed waters; of the long hair which
has fallen over their rims; of the great languid eyes that have looked
at the sky through the openings in the vaulted ceiling, while beneath
the arches of the Court of the Lions sounded the hastening step of
an impatient caliph, and the hundred fountains of the castle sighed
with a quickening murmur, 'Come! come! come!' and in a perfumed hall
a trembling slave reverently closed the windows with the rose-colored
curtains."
"Ah! leave my soul in peace!" I replied, shrugging my shoulders.
We crossed the garden of the Cabinet of Lindaraja and a mysterious
court called the _Patio de la Reja_, and by a long gallery that
commands a view of the country reached the top of one of the farthest
towers of the Alhambra, called the _Mirador de la Reina_ (the Queen's
toilet), shaded by a little pavilion and open all round, hanging over
an abyss like an eagle's nest. The view one enjoys from this point--one
may say it without fear of contradiction--has not its equal on the face
of the earth.
[Illustration: _Queen's Boudoir, Alhambra_]
Imagine an immense plain, green as a meadow, covered with young grass,
crossed in all directions by endless rows of cypresses, pines, oaks,
and poplars, dotted with dense orange-groves that in the distance look
no larger than shrubs, and with great orchards and gardens so crowded
with fruit trees that they look like green hillocks; and the river
Xenil winding through this immense plain, gleaming among the groves
and gardens like a great silver ribbon; and all around wooded hills,
and beyond the hills lofty rocks of fantastic form, which complete the
picture of a barrier-wall with gigantic towers separating that earthly
paradise from the world; and there, just beneath one's eyes, the city
of Granada, partly extending to the plain and partly on the slope of
the hill, all interspersed with groups of trees, shapeless masses of
verdure which rise and wave above the roofs of the houses like enormous
plumes, until it seems as if they were striving to expand and unite
and cover the entire city; and still nearer the deep valley of the
Darro more than covered--yes, filled to overflowing and almost heaped
full--with its prodigious growth of vegetation, rising like a mountain,
and above it there rises yet again a grove of gigantic poplars tossing
their topmost boughs so close under the windows of the tower that one
can almost touch them; and to the right beyond the Darro, on a high
hill towering toward heaven, bold and rounded like a cupola, the palace
of the Generalife, encircled by its aërial gardens and almost hidden
in a grove of laurels, poplars, and pomegranates; and in the opposite
direction a marvellous spectacle, a thing incredible, a vision of a
dream--the Sierra Nevada, after the Alps, the highest mountain-range in
Europe crowned with snow, white even to a few miles from the gates of
Granada, white even to the hills on whose sides spread the pomegranates
and palms, and where a vegetation almost tropical expands in all its
splendid pomp.
Imagine now over this vast paradise, containing all the smiling graces
of the Orient and all the severe beauties of the North, wedding Europe
to Africa, and bringing to the nuptials all the choicest marvels of
nature, and exhaling to heaven all the perfumes of the earth blended
in one breath,--imagine above this happy valley the sky and sun of
Andalusia, rolling on to its setting and tinting the peaks with a
divine rose-color, and painting the mountain-sides of the Sierra
with all the colors of the rainbow, and clothing them with all the
reflections of the most limpid azure pearls, its rays breaking in a
thousand mists of gold, purple, and gray upon the rocks encircling
the plain, and, as it sinks in a flame of fire, casting like a last
good-night a luminous crown about the gloomy towers of the Alhambra and
the flower-crowned pinnacles of the Generalife, and tell me if this
world can give anything more solemn, more glorious, more intoxicating
than this love-feast of the earth and sky, before which for nine
centuries Granada has trembled with delight and throbbed with pride?
The roof of the _Mirador de la Reina_ is supported by little Moorish
columns, between which extend flattened arches which give the pavilion
an extremely fanciful and graceful appearance. The walls are frescoed,
and one may see along the friezes the initials of Isabella and Philip
interwoven with cupids and flowers. Close by the door there still
remains a stone of the ancient pavement, all perforated, upon which
it is said the sultanas sat to be enveloped in the clouds of perfumed
vapor which arose from below.
Everything in this place tells of love and happiness. There one
breathes an air as pure as that on a mountain-peak, there one perceives
a mingled fragrance of myrtles and roses, and no other sound reaches
the ear save the murmur of the Darro as it dashes among the rocks of
its stony bed, and the singing of a thousand birds hidden in the dense
foliage of the valley; it is truly a nest of loves, a hanging alcove
where to go and dream of an aërial balcony to which one might climb and
thank God for being happy.
"Ah, Gongora," I exclaimed after contemplating for some moments that
enchanting spectacle, "I would give years of my life to be able to
summon here, with a stroke of a magic wand, all the dear ones who are
looking for me in Italy."
Gongora pointed out a large space on the wall, all black with dates and
names of visitors to the Alhambra, written with crayon and charcoal and
cut with knives.
"What is this written here?" he demanded.