The cathedral of Granada deserves to be described part by part in
an even higher degree than the cathedral of Malaga, although it too
is beautiful and magnificent; but I have already described enough
churches. Its foundation was laid by the Catholic kings in 1529 upon
the ruins of the principal mosque of the city, but it has never been
finished. It has a great façade with three doorways, adorned with
statues and bas-reliefs, and it consists of five naves, divided by
twenty measureless pilasters, each composed of a bundle of slender
columns. The chapels contain paintings by Boccanegra, sculptures by
Torrigiano, and tombs and other precious ornaments. Admirable above all
is the great chapel, supported by twenty Corinthian columns divided
into two orders, upon the first of which rise colossal statues of
the twelve apostles, and on the second an entablature covered with
garlands and heads of cherubs. Overhead runs a circle of magnificent
stained-glass windows, which represent the Passion, and from the frieze
which crowns them leap ten bold arches forming the vault of the chapel.
Within the arches that support the columns are six great paintings by
Alonzo Cano, which are said to be his most beautiful and finished work.
And since I have spoken of Alonzo Cano, a native of Granada, one of
the strongest Spanish painters of the seventeenth century, although
a disciple of the Sevillian school rather than the founder, as some
assert, of a school of his own, but less original than his greatest
contemporaries,--since I have spoken of him, I wish here to record some
traits of his genius and anecdotes of his life little known outside
of Spain, although exceedingly remarkable. Alonzo Cano was the most
quarrelsome, the most irascible, and the most violent of the Spanish
painters. He spent his life in contention. He was a priest. From 1652
to 1658, for six consecutive years, without a day's intermission, he
wrangled with the canons of the cathedral of Granada, of which he was
steward, because he was not willing to become subdeacon in accordance
with the stipulated agreement; before leaving Granada he broke into
pieces with his own hands a statue of Saint Anthony of Padua which he
had made to the order of an auditor of the chancery, because the man
allowed himself to observe that the price demanded seemed a little
dear. Chosen master of design to the royal prince, who, as it appears,
was not born with a talent for painting, he so exasperated his pupil
that the boy was obliged to have recourse to the king that he might
be taken out of his hands. Remanded to Granada, to the neighborhood
of the chapter of the cathedral, as an especial favor, he bore such a
deep rancor from his old litigations with his canons that throughout
his life he would not do a stroke of work for them. But this is a small
matter. He nursed a blind, bestial, inextinguishable hatred against the
Hebrews, and was firmly convinced that in any way to touch a Hebrew or
any object that a Hebrew had touched would bring him misfortune. Owing
to this conviction he did some of the most extravagant feats in the
world. If in walking along the street he ran against a Jew, he would
strip off the infected garment and return home in his shirt-sleeves.
If by chance he succeeded in discovering that in his absence a servant
had admitted a Jew into the house, he discharged the servant, threw
away the shoes with which he had touched the pavement profaned by the
circumcised, and sometimes even had the pavement torn up and reset. And
he found something to find fault with even as he was dying. When he was
approaching the end of life the confessor handed him a clumsily-made
crucifix that he might kiss it, but he pushed it away with his hand,
saying, "Father, give me a naked cross, that I may worship Jesus Christ
as He Himself is and as I behold Him in my mind." But, after all, his
was a rare, charitable nature which abhorred every vulgar action,
and loved with a deep and very pure love the art in which he remains
immortal.
On returning to the church after I had made the round of all the
chapels and was preparing to leave, I was impressed by a suspicion that
there was something else still to be seen. I had not read the Guidebook
and had been told nothing, but I heard an inner voice which said to
me, "Seek!" and, in fact, I sought with my eyes in every direction,
without knowing what I sought. A cicerone noticed me and sidled up to
me, as all of his kind do, like an assassin, and asked me with an air
of mystery, "_Quiere usted algo?_" (Do you wish something, sir?)
"I should like to know," I replied, "if there is anything to see in
this cathedral besides that which I have seen already?"
"How!" exclaimed the cicerone; "you have not seen the royal chapel,
have you, sir?"
"What is there in the royal chapel?"
"What is there? Caramba! Nothing less than the tombs of Ferdinand and
Isabella the Catholics."
I could have said so! I had in my mind a place ready for this idea,
and the idea was lacking! The Catholic kings must certainly have been
buried in Granada, where they fought the last great chivalrous war of
the Middle Ages, and where they gave Christopher Columbus a commission
to fit out ships which bore him to the New World. I ran rather than
walked to the royal chapel, preceded by the limping cicerone; an old
sacristan opened the door of the sacristy, and before he allowed me to
enter and see the tombs he led me to a sort of glass cupboard full of
precious objects, and said to me, "You will remember that Isabella the
Catholic, to furnish Christopher Columbus with the money that he needed
to supply the ships for the voyage, not knowing where to turn because
the coffers of the state were empty, put her jewels in pawn."
"Yes: well?" I demanded impatiently; and, divining the answer, felt my
heart beat faster the while.
"Well," replied the sacristan, "that is the box in which the queen
locked her jewels to send them to be pawned."
And so saying he opened the cupboard and took out the box and handed it
to me.
Oh! brave men may say what they will; as for me, there are things that
make me tremble and weep. I have touched the box that contained the
treasure by which Columbus was enabled to discover America. Every time
I repeat those words my blood is stirred, and I add, "I have touched it
with these hands," and I look at my hands.
That cupboard contains also the sword of King Ferdinand, the crown and
sceptre of Isabella, a missal and some other ornaments of the king and
queen.
We entered the chapel. Between the altar and a great iron chancel that
separates it from the remaining space stand two great mausoleums of
marble adorned with statuettes and bas-reliefs of great value. Upon
one of them lie the statues of Ferdinand and Isabella in their royal
robes, with crown, sword, and sceptre; on the other the statues of the
other two princes of Spain, and around the statues lions, angels, and
arms, and various ornaments, presenting a regal appearance, austere and
magnificent.
The sacristan lighted a flambeau, and, pointing out a sort of trap-door
in the pavement between the two mausoleums, asked me to open it and
descend into the subterranean chamber. With the cicerone's aid I opened
the trap-door; the sacristan descended, and I followed him down a
narrow little staircase until we reached a little room. There were five
caskets of lead, bound with iron bands, each sealed with two initials
under a crown. The sacristan lowered the torch, and, touching all five
of them, one after another, with his hand, said in a slow, solemn voice,
"Here rests the great queen Isabella the Catholic.
"Here rests the great king Ferdinand V.
"Here rests the king Philip I.
"Here rests Queen Joanna the Mad.
"Here rests Lady Maria, her daughter, who died at the age of nine years.
"God keep them all in his holy peace!"
And, placing the torch on the ground, he crossed his arms and closed
his eyes, as if to give me time for meditation.
One would become a hunchback at his desk if he were to describe all
the religious monuments of Granada--the stupendous Cartuja; the Monte
Sacro, containing the grottoes of the martyrs; the church of San
Geronimo, where the great leader Gonzalez di Cordova is buried; the
convent of Santo Domingo, founded by Torquemada the Inquisitor; the
convent of the Angels, containing paintings by Cano and Murillo and
many others; but I suppose that my readers may be even more weary than
I am, and will consequently pardon me for passing by a mountain of
description which probably would only give them a confused idea of the
things described.
But as I have mentioned the sepulchre of the great commander, Gonzalez
di Cordova, I cannot forbear translating a curious document in
reference to him which was shown me in the church of San Geronimo by a
sacristan who was an admirer of the deeds of that hero. The document,
in the form of an anecdote, is as follows:
"Every step of the great captain Don Gonzalez di Cordova was an
assault, and every assault a victory; his sepulchre in the convent of
the Geronomites at Granada was adorned with two hundred banners which
he had taken. His envious rivals, and the treasurers of the kingdom of
Naples in particular, induced the king in 1506 to demand a statement
from Gonzalez of the use he had made of the great sums received from
Spain for the conduct of the war in Italy; and, in fact, the king was
so small as to consent, and even to be present on the occasion of the
conference.
"Gonzalez acceded to the demand with the haughtiest disdain, and
proposed to give a severe lesson to the treasurers and the king upon
the treatment and consideration to be accorded a conqueror of kingdoms.
"He replied with great indifference and calmness that he would prepare
his accounts for the following day, and would let it appear which was
the debtor, himself or the exchequer, which demanded an account of one
hundred and thirty thousand ducats delivered upon the first payment,
eighty thousand crowns upon the second, three millions upon the third,
eleven millions upon the fourth, thirteen millions upon the fifth,
and so on as the solemn, nasal, foolish secretary who authorized so
important an act continued to enumerate the sums.
"The great Gonzalez kept his word, presented himself at the second
audience, and, bringing out a voluminous book in which he had noted his
justification, he began with the following words in a deep, sonorous
voice:
"'Two hundred thousand seven hundred and thirty-six ducats and nine
reales to the fathers, the nuns, and the poor, to the end that they
might pray God for the triumph of the Spanish arms.
"'One hundred thousand ducats for powder and shot.
"'Ten thousand ducats for perfumed gloves to protect the soldiers from
the stench of the corpses of the enemy left on the field of battle.
"'One hundred and seventy thousand ducats for renewing bells worn out
by continuous ringing for constant new victories over the enemy.
"'Fifty thousand ducats for brandy for the soldiers on the day of
battle.
"'A million and a half ducats for the maintenance of the prisoners and
wounded.
"'A million for returning thanks and Te Deums to the Omnipotent.
"'Three hundred millions in masses for the dead.
"'Seven hundred thousand four hundred and ninety-four ducats for spies
and ...
"'One hundred millions for the patience which I showed yesterday on
hearing that the king demanded an account from the man who has given
him his kingdom.'
"These are the celebrated accounts of the great captain, the originals
of which are in the possession of Count d'Altimira.
"One of the original accounts, with the autograph seal of the great
captain, exists in the Military Museum of London, where it is guarded
with great care."
On reading this document I returned to the hotel, making invidious
comparisons between Gonzalez di Cordova and the Spanish generals of our
times, which, for grave state reasons, as they say in the tragedies, I
dare not repeat.
In the hotel I saw something new every day. There were many university
students who had come from Malaga and other Andalusian cities to take
the examination for the doctor's degree at Granada, whether because
they were a little easier there or for what other reason I do not
know. We all ate at a round table. One morning at breakfast one of the
students, a young man of about twenty, announced that at two o'clock
he was to be examined in canon law, and that, not feeling very sure of
himself, he had decided to take a glass of wine to refresh the springs
of eloquence. He was accustomed to drink only wine weakened with water,
and committed the imprudence of emptying at a single draught a glass
of the vintage of Xerez. His face changed in an instant in so strange
a manner that if I had not seen the transformation with my own eyes I
should not have believed that he was the same person.
"There! that is enough!" cried his friends.
But the young man, who already felt that he had become suddenly strong,
keen, and confident, cast a compassionate glance at his companions, and
with a lordly gesture ordered the waiter to fetch him another glass.
"You will be drunk," they said.
His only response was to drain a second glass.
Then he became wonderfully talkative. There was a score of persons
at table: in a few minutes he was conversing with them all, and he
revealed a thousand secrets of his past life and his plans for the
future. He said that he was from Cadiz, that he had eight thousand
francs a year to spend, and that he wished to devote himself to a
diplomatic career, because with that revenue, added to something which
his uncle would leave him, he should be able to cut a good figure
wherever he might be; that he had decided to take a wife at thirty, and
to marry a woman as tall as himself, because it was his opinion that
the wife should be of the same stature as her husband, to keep either
from getting the upper hand of the other; that when he was a boy he
was in love with the daughter of an American consul as beautiful as a
flower and strong as a pine, but she had a red birth-mark behind one
ear, which looked badly, although she knew how to cover it very well
with her scarf, and he showed us with his napkin how she covered it;
and that Don Amadeus was too ingenuous a man to succeed in governing
Spain; that of the poets Zorilla and Espronceda, he had always
preferred Espronceda; that it would be folly to cede Cuba to America;
that the examination on canon law made him laugh; and that he wished to
drink another four fingers of Xerez, the finest wine in Europe.
He drank a third glass in spite of the good counsel and disapprobation
of his friends, and after prattling a little longer amid the laughter
of his audience, he suddenly became silent, looked fixedly at a lady
sitting opposite to him, dropped his head, and fell asleep. I thought
that he could not present himself for the examination that day, but
was mistaken. A short hour later they awakened him; he went up stairs
to wash his face, ran off to the university still drowsy, took his
examination, and was promoted, to the greater glory of the wine of
Xerez and Spanish diplomacy.
I devoted the following days to visiting the monuments, or, to be
more accurate, the ruins of the Moorish monuments which besides the
Alhambra and the Generalife attest the ancient splendor of Granada.
Insomuch as it was the last bulwark of Islam, Granada is the city which
presents the most numerous relics of all the cities of Spain. On the
hill called the hill of _Dinadamar_ (the Fountain of Tears) one may
still see the ruins of four towers rising at the four corners of a
great cistern into which flowed the waters from the Sierra to supply
the highest part of the city. There were baths, gardens, and villas of
which not a trace remains: from that point one overlooked the city with
its minarets, its terraces, and its mosques gleaming among the palms
and cypresses. Near there one sees a Moorish gate called the gate of
Elvira--a great arch crowned with battlements--and beyond it are the
ruins of the palaces of the caliphs. Near the Alameda promenade stands
a square tower in which there is a great hall ornamented with the usual
Arabian inscriptions. Near the convent of San Domingo are the remains
of gardens and palaces once joined to the Alhambra by a subterranean
passage. Within the city is the Alcaiceria, a Moorish market almost
perfectly preserved, formed of a few little streets as straight and
narrow as corridors, lined with two rows of shops, one adjoining the
other, and presenting the strange appearance of an Asiatic bazaar.
In short, one cannot take a step in Granada without coming face to
face with an arch, an arabesque, a column, or a pile of stones which
suggests its fantastic, luxurious past.
What turns and windings have I not made through those tortuous streets
at the hottest hour of the day, under a sun that shrivelled my brain,
without meeting a living soul! At Granada, as in the other cities of
Andalusia, the people are alive only at night, and the night repays
them for the imprisonment of the day; the public promenades are crowded
and confused by the hurry and jostling of a multitude, one half of
which seems to be seeking the other half upon urgent business. The
crowd is densest in the Alameda, but, for all that, I spent my evenings
on the Alameda with Gongora, who talked to me of Moorish monuments, and
with a journalist who discoursed on politics, and also with another
young man who talked of women, and frequently with all three of them
together, to my infinite pleasure, because those cheery meetings, like
those of school-boys, at odd times and places, refreshed my mind, to
steal a beautiful simile, like a summer shower refreshes the grass as
it falls faster and faster, dancing for joy.
If I were obliged to say something about the people of Granada, I
should be embarrassed, because I have not seen them. In the day-time
I met no one in the streets, and at night I could not see them. The
theatres were not open, and when I might have found some one in the
city I was wandering through the halls or avenues of the Alhambra; and
then I had so much to do to see everything in the short time which I
had allowed myself that no unoccupied moments remained for those chance
conversations, like the ones I had in the other cities, in the streets
and the cafés, with whomever I happened to meet.
But from what I learned from men who were in a position to give me
trustworthy information, the people of Granada do not enjoy an enviable
reputation in Spain. They are said to be ill-tempered, violent,
vindictive, and bloodthirsty; and this arraignment is not disproved by
the pages of the city newspapers. It is not publicly stated, but every
one knows it for a fact, that popular instruction in Granada is at a
lower ebb than even in Seville and the other smaller Spanish cities,
and, as a rule, everything that cannot be produced by the sun and the
soil, which produce so bountifully, goes to the bad, either through
indolence or ignorance or shiftlessness. Granada is not connected
by railway with any important city: she lives alone, surrounded by
her gardens, enclosed by her mountains, happy with the fruits which
Nature produces under her hand, gently lulling herself to sleep in the
vanity of her beauty and the pride of her history--idle, drowsy, and
fanciful, content to answer with a yawn to any one who reproves her
for her condition: "I gave Spain the painter Alonzo Cano, the poet
Louis de Leon, the historian Fernando de Castillo, the sacred orator
Luis di Grenada, and the minister Martinez de la Rosas. I have paid
my debt, leave me in peace;" and this is the reply made by almost all
the southern cities of Spain, more beautiful, alas! than wise and
industrious, and proud rather than civilized. Ah! one who has seen them
can never have done exclaiming, "What a pity!"
"Now that you have seen all the marvels of Moorish art and tropical
vegetation there remains the suburb of the Albaicin to be seen before
you can say that you know Granada. Prepare your mind for a new world,
put your hand on your purse, and follow me."
So said Gongora to me on the last evening of my sojourn in Granada.
A Republican journalist was with us, Melchiorre Almago by name, the
director of the _Idea_, a congenial, affable young man, who to
accompany us sacrificed his dinner and a leading article that he had
been cogitating since morning.
We walked on until we came to the square of the _Audiencia_. There
Gongora pointed out an alley winding up a hill, and said to me, "Here
commences the Albaicin;" and Señor Melchiorre, touching a house with
his cane, added, "Here commences the territory of the republic."
We turned up the alley, passed from it into another, and from that into
a third, always ascending, without my seeing anything extraordinary,
although I looked curiously in every direction. Narrow streets, squalid
houses, old women dozing on the doorsteps, mothers carefully inspecting
their children's heads, gaping dogs, crowing cocks, ragged boys running
and shouting, and the other things that one always sees in the suburbs;
but in those streets nothing more. But gradually, as we ascended, the
appearance of the houses and the people began to change; the roofs
became lower, the windows fewer, the doors smaller, and the people more
ragged. In the middle of every street ran a little stream in a walled
gutter, in the Moorish style; here and there over the doors and around
the windows one saw the remains of arabesques and fragments of columns,
and in the corners of the squares fountains and well-curbs of the time
of the Moorish dominion. At every hundred steps it seemed as if we had
gone back fifty years toward the age of the caliphs. My two companions
touched me on the elbow from time to time, saying as they did so, "Look
at that old woman!"--"Look at that little girl!"--"Look at that man!"
and I looked, and asked, "Who are these people?" If I had unexpectedly
found myself in that place, I should have believed on seeing those men
and women that I was in an African village, so strange were the faces,
the dress, the manner of moving, talking, and looking, at so short a
distance from the centre of Granada--so different were they from the
people that I had seen up to that time. At every turn I stopped to look
in the face of my companions, and they answered, "That is nothing; we
are now in the civilized part of the Albaicin; this is the Parisian
quarter of the suburb; let us go on."
We went on, and the streets seemed like the bed of a torrent--paths
hollowed out among the rocks, all banks and gullies, broken and
stony--some so steep that a mule could not climb them, others so narrow
that a man could scarcely pass; some blocked by women and children
sitting on the ground, others grass-grown and deserted; and all so
squalid, wild, and uncouth that the most wretched of our villages
cannot give one an idea of them, because this is a poverty that bears
the impress of another race and another continent. We turned into a
labyrinth of streets, passing from time to time under a great Moorish
arch or through a high square from which one commanded a view of the
wide valleys, the snow-covered mountains, and a part of the lower city,
until finally we arrived at a street rougher and narrower than any we
had yet seen; and there we stopped to take breath.
"Here commences the real Albaicin," said the young archeologist. "Look
at that house!"
I looked; it was a low, smoke-stained, ruinous house, with a door that
seemed like the mouth of a cavern, before which one saw, under a mass
of rags, a group, or rather a heap, of old women and little children,
who upon our approach raised their eyes heavy with sleep, and with bony
hands removed from the threshold some filth which impeded our passage.
"Let us enter," said my friend.
"Enter?" I demanded.
If they had told me that beyond those walls there was a facsimile of
the famous Court of Miracles which Victor Hugo has described, I should
not have doubted their word. No door has ever said more emphatically
than that, "Stand back!" I cannot find a better comparison than the
gaping mouth of a gigantic witch breathing out pestilential vapors. But
I took courage and entered.
Oh, marvellous! It was the court of a Moorish house surrounded by
graceful little columns surmounted by lovely arches, with those
indescribable traceries of the Alhambra along the porticoes and around
the mullioned windows, with the beams and ceiling carved and enamelled
with little niches for vases of flowers and urns of perfume, with a
pool in the middle, and all the traces and memorials of the delicate
life of an opulent family. And in that house lived those wretched
people!
We went out and entered other houses, in all of which I found some
fragments of Moorish architecture and sculpture. From time to time
Gongora would say to me, "This was a harem. Those were the baths of
the women; up yonder was the chamber of a favorite;" and I fixed my
eyes upon every bit of the arabesqued wall and upon all the little
columns of the windows, as if to ask them for a revelation of their
secrets--only a name or a magic word with which I might reconstruct in
an instant the ruined edifice and summon the beautiful Arabians who had
dwelt there. But, alas! amid the columns and under the arches of the
windows there were only rags and wrinkled faces.
Among other houses, we entered one where we found a group of girls
sewing under the shade of a tree in the courtyard, directed by an old
woman. They were all working upon a great piece of cloth that seemed
like a mat or a bed-spread, in black and gray stripes. I approached and
asked one of the girls, "What is this?"
They all looked up and with a concerted movement spread the cloth open,
so that I could see their work plainly. Almost before I had seen it I
cried, "I will buy it."
They all began to laugh. It was the mantle of an Andalusian
mountaineer, made to wear in the saddle, rectangular in form, with
an opening in the middle to put one's head through, embroidered in
bright-colored worsteds along the two shortest sides and around the
opening. The design of the embroideries, which represented birds
and fantastic flowers, green, blue, white, red, and yellow, all in
a mass, was as crude as a pattern a child might make: the beauty of
the work lay altogether in the harmony of the colors, which was truly
marvellous. I cannot express the sensation produced by the sight of
that mantle, except by saying that it laughed and filled one with its
cheerfulness; and it seems to me impossible to imagine anything gayer,
more festive, or more childishly and gracefully capricious. It was a
thing to look upon in order to bring yourself out of a bad humor, or
when you wish to write a pretty verse in a lady's album, or when you
are expecting a person whom you wish to receive with your brightest
smile.
"When will you finish these embroideries?" I asked one of the girls.
"_Hoy mismo_" (to-day), they all replied in chorus.
"And what is the mantle worth?"
"_Cinco_" (five), stammered one.
The old women pierced her with a glance which seemed to say,
"Blockhead!" and answered hastily, "Six _duros_."
Six _duros_ are thirty francs; it did not seem much to me, and I put my
hand in my pocket.
Gongora cast a withering glance at me which seemed to say, "You
simpleton!" and, drawing me back by the arm, said, "One moment: six
_duros_ is an exorbitant price."
The old woman shot him another glance which seemed to say, "Brigand!"
and replied, "I cannot take less."
Gongora gave her another glance, which seemed to say, "Liar!" and said,
"Come, now; you can take four _duros_; you would not ask more from the
country-people."
The old woman insisted, and for a while we continued to exchange with
our eyes the titles of simpleton, swindler, marplot, liar, pinch-penny,
spend-thrift, until the mantle was sold to me for five duros, and I
paid and left my address, and we went out blessed and commended to
God by the old woman and followed a good way by the black eyes of the
embroiderers.
We went on from street to street, among houses increasingly wretched
and growing blacker and blacker, and more revolting rags and faces. But
we never came to the end, and I asked my companions, "Will you have the
goodness to tell me if Granada has any limits, and if so where they
are? May one ask where we are going and how we shall return home?" But
they simply laughed and went forward.
"Is there anything stranger than this to be seen?" I asked at a certain
point.
"Stranger?" they both replied. "This second part of the suburb which
you have seen still belongs to civilization: if not the Parisian, it is
at least the Madrid, quarter of the Albaicin, and there _is_ something
else; let us go on."
We passed through a very small street containing some scantily-clothed
women, who looked like people fallen from the moon; crossed a little
square full of babies and pigs in friendly confusion; passed through
two or three other alleys, now climbing, now descending, now in the
midst of houses, now among piles of rubbish, now between trees and
now among rocks, until we finally arrived at the solitary place on a
hillside from which we saw in front the Generalife, to the right the
Alhambra, and below a deep valley filled with a dense wood.
It was growing dark; no one was in sight and not a voice was heard.
"Is this the end of the suburb?" I asked.