At the end of several months, I again had an opportunity to leave the
Capital for three or four days. I dusted my portfolio, tucked it under
my arm, provided myself with a quire of paper, a half-dozen pencils and
a few napoleons and, deploring the fact that the railroad was not yet
finished, crowded myself into a public stage that I might journey in
reverse order through the scenes of Tirso’s famous comedy _From Toledo
to Madrid_.
Once installed in the historic city, I devoted myself to visiting again
the spots which had most excited my interest on my former trip, and
certain others which as yet I knew only by name.
Thus I let slip by, in long, solitary rambles among the most ancient
quarters of the town, the greater part of the time which I could spare
for my little artistic expedition, finding a veritable pleasure in
losing myself in that confused labyrinth of blind lanes, narrow streets,
dark passages and steep, impracticable heights.
One afternoon, the last that I might at that time remain in Toledo,
after one of these long wanderings in unknown ways, I arrived--by what
streets I can scarcely tell--at a great deserted square, apparently
forgotten by the very inhabitants of the city and hidden away, as it
were, in one of its most remote nooks.
The filth and the rubbish cast out in this square from time immemorial
had identified themselves, if I may say so, with the earth in such a
manner as to present the broken and mountainous aspect of a miniature
Switzerland. On the hillocks and in the valleys formed by these
irregularities were growing at their own will wild mallows of colossal
proportions, circles of giant nettles, creeping tangles of white
morning-glories, stretches of that nameless, common herb, small, fine
and of a darkish green, and among these, swaying gently in the light
breath of the air, overtopping like kings all the other parasitic
plants, the no less poetic than vulgar yellow mustard, true flower of
wastes and ruins.
Scattered along the ground, some half buried, others almost hidden by
the tall weeds, might be seen an infinite number of fragments of
thousands on thousands of diverse articles, broken and thrown out on
that spot in different epochs, where they were in process of forming
strata in which it would be easy to follow out a course of genealogical
history.
Moorish tiles enamelled in various colors, sections of marble and of
jasper columns, fragments of brick of a hundred varying kinds, great
blocks covered with verdure and moss, pieces of wood already nearly
turned to dust, remains of antique panelling, rags of cloth, strips of
leather, and countless other objects, formless, nameless, were what at
first sight appeared on the surface, even while the attention was caught
and the eyes dazzled by glancing sparks of light sprinkled over the
green like a handful of diamonds flung broadcast and which, on closer
survey, proved to be nothing else than tiny bits of glass and of glazed
earthenware,--pots, plates, pitchers,--that, flashing back the sunlight,
counterfeited a very heaven of microscopic, glittering stars.
Such was the flooring of that square, though actually paved in some
places with small pebbles of various colors arranged in patterns, and in
others covered with great slabs of slate, but in the main, as we have
just said, like a garden of parasitic plants or a waste and weedy field.
Nor were the buildings which outlined its irregular form less strange
and worthy of study. On one side it was bounded by a line of dingy
little houses, the roofs twinkling with chimneys, weathercocks and
overhangs, the marble guardposts fastened to the corners with iron
rings, the balconies low or narrow, the small windows set with
flower-pots, and the hanging lantern surrounded by a wire network to
protect its smoky glass from the missiles of the street urchins.
Another boundary was constituted by a great, time-blackened wall full of
chinks and crevices, from which, amid patches of moss, peeped out, with
little bright eyes, the heads of various reptiles,--a wall exceedingly
high, formed of bulky blocks sprinkled over with hollows for doors and
balconies that had been closed up with stone and mortar, and on one of
whose extremities joined, forming an angle with it, a wall of brick
stripped of its plaster and full of rough holes, daubed at intervals
with streaks of red, green and yellow and crowned with a thatch of hay,
in and out of which ran sprays of climbing plants.
This was no more, so to speak, than the side scenery of the strange
stage-setting which, as I made my way into the square, suddenly
presented itself to view, captivating my mind and holding it spell-bound
for a space, for the true culminating point of the panorama, the edifice
which gave it its general tone, rose at the rear of the square, more
whimsical, more original, infinitely more beautiful in its artistic
disorder than all the buildings about.
“Here is what I have been wanting to find,” I exclaimed on seeing it,
and seating myself on a rough piece of marble, placing my portfolio on
my knees and sharpening a pencil, I made ready to sketch, though only in
outline, its irregular and eccentric form that I might ever keep it in
memory.
If I could fasten on here with wafers the very slight and ill-drawn
sketch of this building that I still keep, imperfect and impressionistic
though it is, it would save me a mountain of words, giving to my readers
a truer idea of it than all the descriptions imaginable.
But since this may not be, I will try to depict it as best I can, so
that the readers of these lines may form a remote conception if not of
its infinite details, at least of its effect as a whole.
Imagine an Arab palace with horse-shoe portals, its walls adorned by
long rows of arches with hundreds of intercrossings, running over a
stripe of brilliant tiles; here is seen the recess of an arched window,
cut in two by a group of slender colonnettes and enclosed in a frame of
exquisite, fanciful ornament; there rises a watch-tower with its light
and airy turret, roofed with glazed tiles of green and yellow, its keen
golden arrow losing itself in the void; further on is descried the
cupola that covers a chamber painted in gold and blue, or lofty
galleries closed with green Venetian blinds which on opening reveal
gardens with walks of myrtle, groves of laurel, and high-jetting
fountains. All is unique, all harmonious, though unsymmetrical; all
gives one a glimpse of the luxury and the marvels of its interior; all
lets one divine the character and the customs of its inmates.
The wealthy Arab who owned this edifice finally abandons it; the process
of the years begins to disintegrate the walls, dim their colors and even
corrode their marbles. A king of Castile then chooses for his residence
that already crumbling palace, and at this point he breaks the front,
opening an ogee and adorning it with a border of escutcheons through
whose midst is curled a garland of thistles and clover; yonder he
raises a massive fortress-tower of hewn stone with narrow loopholes and
pointed battlements; further along he builds on a wing of lofty, gloomy
rooms, where may be seen, in curious fellowship, stretches of shining
tiles, dusky vaulting, or a solitary Arab window, or a horse-shoe arch,
light and elegant, giving entrance to a Gothic hall, austere and grand.
But there comes a day when the king, too, abandons this dwelling,
passing it over to a community of nuns, and these in their turn remodel
it, adding new features to the already strange physiognomy of the
Moorish palace. They lattice the windows; between two Arab arches they
set the symbol of their faith, carved in granite; where tamarinds and
laurels used to grow they plant sad and gloomy cypresses; and making use
of some remnants of the old edifice, and building on top of others, they
form the most picturesque and incongruous combinations conceivable.
Above the main portal of the church, where may be dimly seen, as if
enveloped in the mystic twilight made by the shadows of their canopies,
a broadside of saints, angels and virgins at whose feet are
twisted--among acanthus leaves--stone serpents, monsters and dragons,
rises a slender minaret filagreed over with Moorish work; close below
the loopholes of the battlemented walls, whose merlons are now broken,
they place a shrine with a sacred fresco; and they close up the great
slits with thin partitions decorated with little squares like a
chess-board; they put crosses on all the pinnacles, and finally they
rear a spire full of bells which peal mournfully night and day calling
to prayer,--bells which swing at the impulsion of an unseen hand, bells
whose far-off sound sometimes draws from the listener tears of
involuntary grief.
Still the years are passing and are bathing in a dull, mellow,
nondescript hue the whole edifice, harmonizing its colors and sowing ivy
in its crevices.
White storks hang their nests on the tower-vane, martins build under the
eaves, swallows in the granite canopies, and the owls choose for their
haunt lofty holes left by fallen stones, whence on cloudy nights they
affright superstitious old women and timid children with the phosphoric
gleam of their round eyes and their shrill, uncanny hoots.
Only all these changes of fortune, only all these special circumstances
could have resulted in a building so individual, so full of contrasts,
of poetry and of memories as the one which on that afternoon presented
itself to my view and which to-day I have essayed, albeit in vain, to
describe by words.
I had drawn it in part on one of the leaves of my sketch-book. The sun
was scarcely gilding the highest spires of the city, the evening breeze
was beginning to caress my brow, when rapt in the ideas that suddenly
had assailed me on contemplating the silent remains of other eras more
poetic than the material age in which we live, suffocating in its utter
prose, I let my pencil slip from my fingers and gave over the drawing,
leaning against the wall at my back and yielding myself up completely to
the visions of imagination. Of what was I thinking? I do not know that I
can tell. I clearly saw epoch succeeding epoch, walls falling and other
walls rising in their stead. I saw men or, rather, women giving place to
other women, and the first and those who came after changing into dust
and flying like dust upon the air, a puff of wind bearing away
beauty,--beauty which had been wont to call forth secret sighs,
to engender passions, to be the source of ecstasies; then--what
know I?--all confused of thought, I saw many things jumbled
together,--boudoirs of cunning work, with clouds of perfume and beds of
flowers, strait and dreary cells with prayer-stool and crucifix, at the
foot of the crucifix an open book, and upon the book a skull; stern and
stately halls, hung with tapestries and adorned with trophies of war;
and many women passing and still repassing before my gaze, tall nuns
pale and thin, brown concubines with reddest lips and blackest eyes;
great dames of faultless profile, high bearing and majestic gait.
All these things I saw; and many more of those which, though visioned,
cannot be remembered; of those so immaterial that it is impossible to
confine them in the narrow compass of a word,--when suddenly I gave a
bound upon my seat and, passing my hand over my eyes to convince myself
that I was not still dreaming, leaping up as if moved by a nerve-spring,
I fastened my gaze on one of the lofty turrets of the convent. I had
seen--there is no room for doubt--perfectly had I seen a hand of
transcendent whiteness, which, reaching out from one of the apertures of
those turrets mortared like chess-boards, had waved several times as if
greeting me with a mute and loving sign. And it was I whom it greeted;
there was no possibility of a mistake; I was alone, utterly alone in the
square.
In vain I waited till night, nailed to that spot and without removing my
eyes for an instant from the turret; fruitlessly I often returned to
take up my watch again on the dark stone which had served me for seat
that afternoon when I saw appear the mysterious hand, already the object
of my dreams by night and wildest fantasies by day. I beheld it
nevermore.
And finally came the hour when I must depart from Toledo, leaving there,
as a useless and ridiculous burden, all the illusions which in its bosom
had been raised in my mind. I turned with a sigh to put my papers
together in my portfolio; but before securing them there, I wrote
another date, the second, the one which I know as the Date of the Hand.
As I wrote it, I noticed for a moment the earlier, that of the Window,
and could not but smile at my own folly.