were naked, and scrawled over by that class of aspiring travellers who
defile noble monuments with their worthless names. The windows,
dismantled and open to wind and weather, looked out into a charming
little secluded garden, where an alabaster fountain sparkled among roses
and myrtles, and was surrounded by orange and citron trees, some of
which flung their branches into the chambers. Beyond these rooms were
two saloons, longer but less lofty, looking also into the garden. In the
compartments of the panelled ceilings were baskets of fruit and garlands
of flowers, painted by no mean hand, and in tolerable preservation. The
walls also had been painted in fresco in the Italian style, but the
paintings were nearly obliterated; the windows were in the same
shattered state with those of the other chambers. This fanciful suite of
rooms terminated in an open gallery with balustrades, running at right
angles along another side of the garden. The whole apartment, so
delicate and elegant in its decorations, so choice and sequestered in
its situation along this retired little garden, and so different in
architecture from the neighboring halls, awakened an interest in its
history. I found on inquiry that it was an apartment fitted up by
Italian artists in the early part of the last century, at the time when
Philip V. and his second wife, the beautiful Elizabetta of Farnese,
daughter of the Duke of Parma, were expected at the Alhambra. It was
destined for the queen and the ladies of her train. One of the loftiest
chambers had been her sleeping-room. A narrow staircase, now walled up,
led up to a delightful belvidere, originally a mirador of the Moorish
sultanas, communicating with the harem; but which was fitted up as a
boudoir for the fair Elizabetta, and still retains the name of _el
tocador de la Reyna_, or the queen’s toilette.
One window of the royal sleeping-room commanded a prospect of the
Generalife and its embowered terraces; another looked out into the
little secluded garden I have mentioned, which was decidedly Moorish in
its character, and also had its history. It was in fact the garden of
Lindaraxa, so often mentioned in descriptions of the Alhambra; but who
this Lindaraxa was I had never heard explained. A little research gave
me the few particulars known about her. She was a Moorish beauty who
flourished in the court of Muhamed the Left-Handed, and was the daughter
of his loyal adherent, the alcayde of Malaga, who sheltered him in his
city when driven from the throne. On regaining his crown, the alcayde
was rewarded for his fidelity. His daughter had her apartment in the
Alhambra, and was given by the king in marriage to Nasar, a young
Cetimerien prince descended from Aben Hud the Just. Their espousals were
doubtless celebrated in the royal palace, and their honeymoon may have
passed among these very bowers.[7]
Four centuries had elapsed since the fair Lindaraxa passed away, yet how
much of the fragile beauty of the scenes she inhabited remained! The
garden still bloomed in which she delighted; the fountain still
presented the crystal mirror in which her charms may once have been
reflected; the alabaster, it is true, had lost its whiteness; the basin
beneath, overrun with weeds, had become the lurking-place of the
lizard, but there was something in the very decay that enhanced the
interest of the scene, speaking as it did of that mutability, the
irrevocable lot of man and all his works.
The desolation too of these chambers, once the abode of the proud and
elegant Elizabetta, had a more touching charm for me than if I had
beheld them in their pristine splendor, glittering with the pageantry of
a court.
When I returned to my quarters, in the governor’s apartment, everything
seemed tame and commonplace after the poetic region I had left. The
thought suggested itself: Why could I not change my quarters to these
vacant chambers? that would indeed be living in the Alhambra, surrounded
by its gardens and fountains, as in the time of the Moorish sovereigns.
I proposed the change to Dame Antonia and her family, and it occasioned
vast surprise. They could not conceive any rational inducement for the
choice of an apartment so forlorn, remote, and solitary. Dolores
exclaimed at its frightful loneliness; nothing but bats and owls
flitting about,--and then a fox and wildcat kept in the vaults of the
neighboring baths, and roamed about at night. The good Tia had more
reasonable objections. The neighborhood was infested by vagrants;
gypsies swarmed in the caverns of the adjacent hills; the palace was
ruinous and easy to be entered in many places; the rumor of a stranger
quartered alone in one of the remote and ruined apartments, out of the
hearing of the rest of the inhabitants, might tempt unwelcome visitors
in the night, especially as foreigners were always supposed to be well
stocked with money. I was not to be diverted from my humor, however, and
my will was law with these good people. So, calling in the assistance of
a carpenter, and the over officious Mateo Ximenes, the doors and windows
were soon placed in a state of tolerable security, and the
sleeping-room of the stately Elizabetta prepared for my reception. Mateo
kindly volunteered as a body-guard to sleep in my antechamber; but I did
not think it worth while to put his valor to the proof.
With all the hardihood I had assumed and all the precautions I had
taken, I must confess the first night passed in these quarters was
inexpressibly dreary. I do not think it was so much the apprehension of
dangers from without that affected me, as the character of the place
itself, with all its strange associations: the deeds of violence
committed there; the tragical ends of many of those who had once reigned
there in splendor. As I passed beneath the fated halls of the Tower of
Comares on the way to my chamber, I called to mind a quotation, that
used to thrill me in the days of boyhood:
Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns;
And, as the portal opens to receive me,
A voice in sullen echoes through the courts
Tells of a nameless deed!
The whole family escorted me to my chamber, and took leave of me as of
one engaged on a perilous enterprise; and when I heard their retreating
steps die away along the waste antechambers and echoing galleries, and
turned the key of my door, I was reminded of those hobgoblin stories,
where the hero is left to accomplish the adventure of an enchanted
house.
Even the thoughts of the fair Elizabetta and the beauties of her court,
who had once graced these chambers, now, by a perversion of fancy, added
to the gloom. Here was the scene of their transient gayety and
loveliness; here were the very traces of their elegance and enjoyment;
but what and where were they? Dust and ashes! tenants of the tomb!
phantoms of the memory!
A vague and indescribable awe was creeping over me. I would fain have
ascribed it to the thoughts of robbers awakened by the evening’s
conversation, but I felt it was something more unreal and absurd. The
long-buried superstitions of the nursery were reviving, and asserting
their power over my imagination. Everything began to be affected by the
working of my mind. The whispering of the wind among the citron-trees
beneath my window had something sinister. I cast my eyes into the garden
of Lindaraxa; the groves presented a gulf of shadows; the thickets,
indistinct and ghastly shapes. I was glad to close the window, but my
chamber itself became infected. There was a slight rustling noise
overhead; a bat suddenly emerged from a broken panel of the ceiling,
flitting about the room and athwart my solitary lamp; and as the fateful
bird almost flouted my face with his noiseless wing, the grotesque faces
carved in high relief in the cedar ceiling, whence he had emerged,
seemed to mope and mow at me.
Rousing myself, and half smiling at this temporary weakness, I resolved
to brave it out in the true spirit of the hero of the enchanted house;
so, taking lamp in hand, I sallied forth to make a tour of the palace.
Notwithstanding every mental exertion the task was a severe one. I had
to traverse waste halls and mysterious galleries, where the rays of the
lamp extended but a short distance around me. I walked, as it were, in a
mere halo of light, walled in by impenetrable darkness. The vaulted
corridors were as caverns; the ceilings of the halls were lost in gloom.
I recalled all that had been said of the danger from interlopers in
these remote and ruined apartments. Might not some vagrant foe be
lurking before or behind me, in the outer darkness? My own shadow, cast
upon the wall, began to disturb me. The echoes of my own footsteps along
the corridors made me pause and look round. I was traversing scenes
fraught with dismal recollections. One dark passage led down to the
mosque where Yusef, the Moorish monarch, the finisher of the Alhambra,
had been basely murdered. In another place I trod the gallery where
another monarch had been struck down by the poniard of a relative whom
he had thwarted in his love.
A low murmuring sound, as of stifled voices and clanking chains, now
reached me. It seemed to come from the Hall of the Abencerrages. I knew
it to be the rush of water through subterranean channels, but it sounded
strangely in the night, and reminded me of the dismal stories to which
it had given rise.
Soon, however, my ear was assailed by sounds too fearfully real to be
the work of fancy. As I was crossing the Hall of Ambassadors, low moans
and broken ejaculations rose, as it were, from beneath my feet. I paused
and listened. They then appeared to be outside of the tower--then again
within. Then broke forth howlings as of an animal--then stifled shrieks
and inarticulate ravings. Heard in that dead hour and singular place,
the effect was thrilling. I had no desire for further perambulation; but
returned to my chamber with infinitely more alacrity than I had sallied
forth, and drew my breath more freely when once more within its walls
and the door bolted behind me. When I awoke in the morning, with the sun
shining in at my window and lighting up every part of the building with
his cheerful and truth-telling beams, I could scarcely recall the
shadows and fancies conjured up by the gloom of the preceding night; or
believe that the scenes around me, so naked and apparent, could have
been clothed with such imaginary horrors.
Still, the dismal howlings and ejaculations I had heard were not ideal;
they were soon accounted for, however, by my handmaid Dolores: being the
ravings of a poor maniac, a brother of her aunt, who was subject to
violent paroxysms, during which he was confined in a vaulted room
beneath the Hall of Ambassadors.
In the course of a few evenings a thorough change took place in the
scene and its associations. The moon, which when I took possession of my
new apartments was invisible, gradually gained each evening upon the
darkness of the night, and at length rolled in full splendor above the
towers, pouring a flood of tempered light into every court and hall. The
garden beneath my window, before wrapped in gloom, was gently lighted
up; the orange-and citron-trees were tipped with silver; the fountain
sparkled in the moonbeams, and even the blush of the rose was faintly
visible.
I now felt the poetic merit of the Arabic inscription on the
walls,--“How beauteous is this garden; where the flowers of the earth
vie with the stars of heaven. What can compare with the vase of yon
alabaster fountain filled with crystal water? nothing but the moon in
her fulness, shining in the midst of an unclouded sky!”
On such heavenly nights I would sit for hours at my window inhaling the
sweetness of the garden, and musing on the checkered fortunes of those
whose history was dimly shadowed out in the elegant memorials around.
Sometimes, when all was quiet, and the clock from the distant cathedral
of Granada struck the midnight hour, I have sallied out on another tour
and wandered over the whole building; but how different from my first
tour! No longer dark and mysterious; no longer peopled with shadowy
foes; no longer recalling scenes of violence and murder; all was open,
spacious, beautiful; everything called up pleasing and romantic fancies;
Lindaraxa once more walked in her garden; the gay chivalry of Moslem
Granada once more glittered about the Court of Lions! Who can do justice
to a moonlight night in such a climate and such a place? The temperature
of a summer midnight in Andalusia is perfectly ethereal. We seem lifted
up into a purer atmosphere; we feel a serenity of soul, a buoyancy of
spirits, an elasticity of frame, which render mere existence happiness.
But when moonlight is added to all this, the effect is like enchantment.
Under its plastic sway the Alhambra seems to regain its pristine
glories. Every rent and chasm of time; every mouldering tint and
weather-stain is gone; the marble resumes its original whiteness; the
long colonnades brighten in the moonbeams; the halls are illuminated
with a softened radiance,--we tread the enchanted palace of an Arabian
tale!
What a delight, at such a time, to ascend to the little airy pavilion of
the queen’s toilette (el tocador de la reyna), which, like a bird-cage,
overhangs the valley of the Darro, and gaze from its light arcades upon
the moonlight prospect! To the right, the swelling mountains of the
Sierra Nevada, robbed of their ruggedness and softened into a fairy
land, with their snowy summits gleaming like silver clouds against the
deep blue sky. And then to lean over the parapet of the Tocador and gaze
down upon Granada and the Albaycin spread out like a map below; all
buried in deep repose; the white palaces and convents sleeping in the
moonshine, and beyond all these the vapory Vega fading away like a
dreamland in the distance.
Sometimes the faint click of castanets rise from the Alameda, where some
gay Andalusians are dancing away the summer night. Sometimes the dubious
tones of a guitar and the notes of an amorous voice, tell perchance the
whereabout of some moonstruck lover serenading his lady’s window.
Such is a faint picture of the moonlight nights I have passed loitering
about the courts and halls and balconies of this most suggestive pile;
“feeding my fancy with sugared suppositions,” and enjoying that mixture
of reverie and sensation which steal away existence in a southern
climate; so that it has been almost morning before I have retired to
bed, and been lulled to sleep by the falling waters of the fountain of
Lindaraxa.
PANORAMA FROM THE TOWER OF COMARES
It is a serene and beautiful morning: the sun has not gained sufficient
power to destroy the freshness of the night. What a morning to mount to
the summit of the Tower of Comares, and take a bird’s-eye view of
Granada and its environs!
Come then, worthy reader and comrade, follow my steps into this
vestibule, ornamented with rich tracery, which opens into the Hall of
Ambassadors. We will not enter the hall, however, but turn to this small
door opening into the wall. Have a care! here are steep winding steps
and but scanty light; yet up this narrow, obscure, and spiral staircase,
the proud monarchs of Granada and their queens have often ascended to
the battlements to watch the approach of invading armies, or gaze with
anxious hearts on the battles in the Vega.
At length we have reached the terraced roof, and may take breath for a
moment, while we cast a general eye over the splendid panorama of city
and country; of rocky mountain, verdant valley, and fertile plain; of
castle, cathedral, Moorish towers, and Gothic domes, crumbling ruins,
and blooming groves. Let us approach the battlements, and cast our eyes
immediately below. See, on this side we have the whole plain of the
Alhambra laid open to us, and can look down into its courts and gardens.
At the foot of the tower is the Court of the Alberca, with its great
tank or fishpool, bordered with flowers; and yonder is the Court of
Lions, with its famous fountain, and its light Moorish arcades; and in
the centre of the pile is the little garden of Lindaraxa, buried in the
heart of the building, with its roses and citrons and shrubbery of
emerald green.
That belt of battlements, studded with square towers, straggling round
the whole brow of the hill, is the outer boundary of the fortress. Some
of the towers, you may perceive, are in ruins, and their massive
fragments buried among vines, fig-trees, and aloes.
Let us look on this northern side of the tower. It is a giddy height;
the very foundations of the tower rise above the groves of the steep
hill-side. And see! a long fissure in the massive walls shows that the
tower has been rent by some of the earthquakes which from time to time
have thrown Granada into consternation; and which, sooner or later, must
reduce this crumbling pile to a mere mass of ruin. The deep narrow glen
below us, which gradually widens as it opens from the mountains, is the
valley of the Darro; you see the little river winding its way under
embowered terraces, and among orchards and flower-gardens. It is a
stream famous in old times for yielding gold, and its sands are still
sifted occasionally, in search of the precious ore. Some of those white
pavilions, which here and there gleam from among groves and vineyards,
were rustic retreats of the Moors, to enjoy the refreshment of their
gardens. Well have they been compared by one of their poets to so many
pearls set in a bed of emeralds.
The airy palace, with its tall white towers and long arcades, which
breasts yon mountain, among pompous groves and hanging gardens, is the
Generalife, a summer palace of the Moorish kings, to which they resorted
during the sultry months to enjoy a still more breezy region than that
of the Alhambra. The naked summit of the height above it, where you
behold some shapeless ruins, is the Silla del Moro, or seat of the Moor,
so called from having been a retreat of the unfortunate Boabdil during
the time of an insurrection, where he seated himself, and looked down
mournfully upon his rebellious city.
A murmuring sound of water now and then rises from the valley. It is
from the aqueduct of yon Moorish mill, nearly at the foot of the hill.
The avenue of trees beyond is the Alameda, along the bank of the Darro,
a favorite resort in evenings, and a rendezvous of lovers in the summer
nights, when the guitar may be heard at a late hour from the benches
along its walls. At present you see none but a few loitering monks
there, and a group of water-carriers. The latter are burdened with
water-jars of ancient Oriental construction, such as were used by the
Moors. They have been filled at the cold and limpid spring called the
fountain of Avellanos. Yon mountain path leads to the fountain, a
favorite resort of Moslems as well as Christians; for this is said to be
the Adinamar (Aynu-l-adamar), the “Fountain of Tears,” mentioned by Ibn
Batuta the traveller, and celebrated in the histories and romances of
the Moors.
You start! ’tis nothing but a hawk that we have frightened from his
nest. This old tower is a complete breeding-place for vagrant birds; the
swallow and martlet abound in every chink and cranny, and circle about
it the whole day long; while at night, when all other birds have gone to
rest, the moping owl comes out of its lurking-place, and utters its
boding cry from the battlements. See how the hawk we have dislodged
sweeps away below us, skimming over the tops of the trees, and sailing
up to the ruins above the Generalife!
I see you raise your eyes to the snowy summit of yon pile of mountains,
shining like a white summer cloud in the blue sky. It is the Sierra
Nevada, the pride and delight of Granada; the source of her cooling
breezes and perpetual verdure, of her gushing fountains and perennial
streams. It is this glorious pile of mountains which gives to Granada
that combination of delights so rare in a southern city,--the fresh
vegetation and temperate airs of a northern climate, with the vivifying
ardor of a tropical sun, and the cloudless azure of a southern sky. It
is this aërial treasury of snow, which, melting in proportion to the
increase of the summer heat, sends down rivulets and streams through
every glen and gorge of the Alpuxarras, diffusing emerald verdure and
fertility throughout a chain of happy and sequestered valleys.
Those mountains may be well called the glory of Granada. They dominate
the whole extent of Andalusia, and may be seen from its most distant
parts. The muleteer hails them, as he views their frosty peaks from the
sultry level of the plain; and the Spanish mariner on the deck of his
bark, far, far off on the bosom of the blue Mediterranean, watches them
with a pensive eye, thinks of delightful Granada, and chants, in low
voice, some old romance about the Moors.
See to the south at the foot of those mountains a line of arid hills,
down which a long train of mules is slowly moving. Here was the closing
scene of Moslem domination. From the summit of one of those hills the
unfortunate Boabdil cast back his last look upon Granada, and gave vent
to the agony of his soul. It is the spot famous in song and story, “The
last sigh of the Moor.”
Further this way these arid hills slope down into the luxurious Vega,
from which he had just emerged: a blooming wilderness of grove and
garden, and teeming orchard, with the Xenil winding through it in silver
links, and feeding innumerable rills; which, conducted through ancient
Moorish channels, maintain the landscape in perpetual verdure. Here were
the beloved bowers and gardens, and rural pavilions, for which the
unfortunate Moors fought with such desperate valor. The very hovels and
rude granges; now inhabited by boors, show, by the remains of arabesques
and other tasteful decoration, that they were elegant residences in the
days of the Moslems. Behold, in the very centre of this eventful plain,
a place which in a manner links the history of the Old World with that
of the New. Yon line of walls and towers gleaming in the morning sun, is
the city of Santa Fe, built by the Catholic sovereigns during the siege
of Granada, after a conflagration had destroyed their camp. It was to
these walls Columbus was called back by the heroic queen, and within
them the treaty was concluded which led to the discovery of the Western
World. Behind yon promontory to the west is the bridge of Pinos,
renowned for many a bloody fight between Moors and Christians. At this
bridge the messenger overtook Columbus when, despairing of success with
the Spanish sovereigns, he was departing to carry his project of
discovery to the court of France.
Above the bridge a range of mountains bounds the Vega to the west,--the
ancient barrier between Granada and the Christian territories. Among
their heights you may still discern warrior towns; their gray walls and
battlements seeming of a piece with the rocks on which they are built.
Here and there a solitary atalaya, or watchtower, perched on a mountain
peak, looks down as it were from the sky into the valley on either side.
How often have these atalayas given notice, by fire at night or smoke by
day, of an approaching foe! It was down a cragged defile of these
mountains, called the Pass of Lope, that the Christian armies descended
into the Vega. Round the base of yon gray and naked mountain (the
mountain of Elvira), stretching its bold rocky promontory into the bosom
of the plain, the invading squadrons would come bursting into view, with
flaunting banners and clangor of drum and trumpet.
Five hundred years have elapsed since Ismael ben Ferrag, a Moorish king
of Granada, beheld from this very tower an invasion of the kind, and an
insulting ravage of the Vega; on which occasion he displayed an instance
of chivalrous magnanimity, often witnessed in the Moslem princes; “whose
history,” says an Arabian writer, “abounds in generous actions and noble
deeds that will last through all succeeding ages, and live forever in
the memory of man.”--But let us sit down on this parapet, and I will
relate the anecdote.
It was in the year of grace 1319, that Ismael ben Ferrag beheld from
this tower a Christian camp whitening the skirts of yon mountain of
Elvira. The royal princes, Don Juan and Don Pedro, regents of Castile
during the minority of Alfonso XI., had already laid waste the country
from Alcaudete to Alcalá la Real, capturing the castle of Illora and
setting fire to its suburbs, and they now carried their insulting
ravages to the very gates of Granada, defying the king to sally forth
and give them battle.
Ismael, though a young and intrepid prince, hesitated to accept the
challenge. He had not sufficient force at hand, and awaited the arrival
of troops summoned from the neighboring towns. The Christian princes,
mistaking his motives, gave up all hope of drawing him forth, and having
glutted themselves with ravage, struck their tents and began their
homeward march. Don Pedro led the van, and Don Juan brought up the rear,
but their march was confused and irregular, the army being greatly
encumbered by the spoils and captives they had taken.