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Gautier Théophile
Wanderings in Spain

At the end of the road, which continues to rise, you meet a large monumental fountain, which serves as a shouldering-piece, raised to the memory of the emperor Charles the Fifth: it is covered with numerous devices, coats of arms, names of victories, imperial eagles, mythological medallions, is of a heavy imposing richness, and in the Romanic-German style. Two shields, bearing the arms of the house of Mondejar, announce that Don Luis de Mendoza, marquis of this title, raised the monument in honour of the red-bearded Cæsar. This fountain, which is solidly constructed, supports the ascent which leads to the Gate of Justice, through which you enter the Alhambra proper.

The Gate of Justice was built by King Yusef Abul Hagiag, about the year of our Lord 1348: it owes its name to the custom the Mussulmans have of rendering justice on the threshold of their palaces; this custom possesses the advantage of being very majestic, and of allowing no one to enter the inner courts; for the maxim of Monsieur Royer-Collard, which says that "Private life ought to be walled in," was invented ages ago by the inhabitants of the East – that country of the sun, whence all light and wisdom come.

The name of tower might be given more properly than that of gate to this construction of King Yusef Abul Hagiag; for it is in reality a large square tower, rather high, and through which there is a large hollow arch in the form of a heart, to which a hieroglyphic key and hand, cut in two separate stones, impart a stern and cabalistic air. The key is a symbol held in great veneration by the Arabs, on account of a verse in the Koran beginning with the words "He has opened," and of several other hermetic significations; the hand is destined to destroy the influence of the Evil Eye, the jettatura, like the little coral hands which they wear at Naples as pins or watch appendages, to avert the power of sinister looks. There was an ancient prediction which asserted that Granada would never be taken until the hand had seized the key: it must be owned, however, to the shame of the prophet, that the two hieroglyphics are still in the same places; and that Boabdil, el rey chico, as he was called on account of his small stature, uttered outside the walls of conquered Granada the historical groan, suspiro del Moro, which has given its name to a rock of the Sierra de Elvira.

This massive and embattled tower, glazed with orange and red on a stiff sky-blue ground, and having behind it a whole abyss of vegetation, with the city built on a precipice, while beyond it are long ranges of mountains streaked with a thousand hues, like those of African porphyry, forms a truly majestic and splendid entrance to the Arabian palace. Under the gate is a guard-house, and poor ragged soldiers now take their siesta in the same place where the caliphs, seated on sofas of gold brocade, with their black eyes motionless in their marble faces and their hands buried in the folds of their silky beards, listened with a thoughtful and solemn air to the complaints of the believers. An altar, surmounted by an image of the Virgin, stands against the wall, as if to sanctify at the very entrance this ancient abode of the worshippers of Mahomet.

When you have passed through the gate, you enter a vast place called the Plaza de las Algives, in the middle of which is a well whose curb is surrounded by a sort of wooden shed covered with esparto-work, where you can go, for a cuarto, and drink large glasses of water as clear as a diamond, as cold as ice, and of the most delicious taste. The towers of Quebrada, the Homenaga, the Armeria, and of the Vela, whose bell announces the time at which the water is distributed; and stone parapets on which you can lean, in order to admire the wonderful view that stretches itself before you, surround one side of the place; the other side is occupied by the palace of Charles the Fifth, an immense monument of the Renaissance which would be admired anywhere else, but which is wished anywhere but here when you think that it covers a space once belonging to a part of the Alhambra, that was pulled down on purpose to make room for this heavy mass. This alcazar was designed, however, by Alonzo Berruguete: the trophies, bas-reliefs, and medallions on its façade have been executed with patience by a bold and spirited hand: the circular court with its marble columns, where the bull-fights, doubtless, took place, is certainly a magnificent piece of architecture, but non erat hic locus.

You enter the Alhambra by a corridor running through an angle of the palace of Charles the Fifth, and after a few windings you arrive at a large court indifferently known by the names of Patio de los Arrayanes (Court of Myrtles), of the Alberca (of the Reservoir), or of the Mezouar, an Arabian word signifying a bath for women.

On coming from these obscure passages into this large space inundated with light, you feel an effect similar to that produced by a diorama. It appears to you that an enchanter's wand has carried you to the East of four or five centuries back. Time, which changes all things in its progress, has in no way modified the aspect of these places, where the apparition of one of the old Moorish sultans, and of Tarfe the Moor in his white cloak, would not cause the least surprise.

In the middle of the court there is a large reservoir three or four feet deep, in the form of a parallelogram, bordered by two large beds of myrtles and shrubs, and terminated at each end by a sort of gallery, with slender columns supporting Moorish arches of very delicate workmanship. Fountains, the over-abundant water of which is conducted from the basins to the reservoir through a marble gutter, are placed under each gallery, and complete the symmetry of the decorations. To the left are the archives, and the chamber where, to the shame of the Granadians, is stowed away, among all sorts of rubbish, the magnificent vase of the Alhambra, a monument of inestimable rareness, nearly four feet in height, covered with ornaments and inscriptions, and fitted in itself to form the glory of a museum, but which Spanish heedlessness allows to lie uncared-for in an ignoble hole. One of the wings which form the handles was broken off a little time back. On this side also are passages leading to an ancient mosque, converted into a church under the protection of St. Mary of the Alhambra, at the time of the conquest. To the right are the rooms of the attendants, where the head of some dark Andalusian servantmaid, looking out of a narrow Moorish casement, now and then produces a very pleasing Oriental effect. At the bottom, above the ugly roof of round tiles, which have replaced the gilt tiles and cedar-beams of the Arabian roof, rises majestically the tower of Comares, the embattlements of which boldly shoot forth their vermilion denticulations into the beautifully limpid vault of heaven. This tower contains the Hall of Ambassadors, and communicates with the Patio de los Arrayanes by a sort of antechamber called the Barca, on account of its form.

The antechamber of the Hall of Ambassadors is worthy of its purpose; the nobleness of its arcades, the variety and interweavings of its arabesques, the mosaic-work of its walls, the delicacy of its stuccoed roof, furrowed like the stalactite ceiling of a grotto, painted blue, green, and yellow, of which there are still some traces left, form a whole of the most charming originality and strangeness.

On each side of the door leading to the Hall of Ambassadors, in the jamb itself of the arcade, and above the coating of varnished glass which decorates the lower part of the walls, and which is divided into triangles of glaring colours, are two white marble niches, looking like little chapels, and sculptured in a most delicate manner. It was here that the ancient Moors used to leave their slippers before entering, as a mark of deference, just as we take off our hat in places we respect.

The Hall of Ambassadors, one of the largest of the Alhambra, occupies all the interior of the tower of Comares. The roof, which is cedar, is full of those mathematical combinations so familiar to Arabian architects: all the pieces are placed so that their salient or re-entering angles form a great variety of designs; the walls disappear beneath a network of ornaments so close together, and so inextricably interwoven, that they can be compared to nothing more fitly than to several pieces of guipure placed one over another. Gothic architecture, with its stone lacework, and its open-worked roses, is nothing to this. Fish-knives, and paper embroidery executed with a fly-press, like that which confectioners use to cover their bonbons with, can alone give you an idea of it. One of the characteristics of the Moorish style is that it offers very few projections or profiles. All this ornamental work is executed on smooth surfaces, and scarcely ever projects more than four or five inches; it resembles a kind of tapestry worked on the wall itself. It has, too, one very distinguishing feature, and this is, the employment of writing as a means of decoration. It is true that Arabian writing, with its mysterious forms and distortions, is admirably fitted for this use. The inscriptions, which are nearly always suras of the Koran, or eulogiums on the different princes who have built and decorated the halls, are placed along the friezes, on the jambs of the doors, and round the arches of the windows, and are interspersed with flowers, foliage, net-work, and all the riches of Arabian calligraphy. Those in the Hall of Ambassadors signify "Glory to God, power and riches to believers;" or they sing the praises of Abu Nazar, who, "if he had been taken alive into heaven, would have made the brightness of the stars and planets pale" – a hyperbolical assertion, which seems to us rather too oriental. Other rows of inscriptions are filled with eulogiums of Abi Abd Allah, another sultan, who helped to build this part of the palace. The windows are loaded with pieces of poetry in honour of the limpidness of the waters of the reservoir, of the blooming condition of the shrubs, and of the perfume of the flowers that ornament the yard of the Mezouar, which is seen from the Hall of Ambassadors through the door and columns of the gallery.

The loopholes, with their interior balconies at a great height from the ground, and the roof of wood-work without any other ornaments but the zigzags and the cross-work formed by the placing of the timber, give the Hall of Ambassadors a severer aspect than the other halls of the palace have, but which is more in harmony with the purpose it was intended for. From the window at the back there is a beautiful view over the ravine of the Darro.

Now that we have given this description, we think it our duty to destroy another illusion. All these magnificent things are made neither of marble nor of alabaster, nor even of stone, but simply of plaster! This interferes very much with the ideas of fairy splendour that the name alone of the Alhambra creates in the most positive imaginations; but it is true, for all that. With the exception of the columns, which are nearly all made of a single piece, and which are hardly ever more than from six to eight feet in height, of a few flag-stones, of the smaller basins of the fountains, and of the little chapels where the slippers used to be left, there has not been a single bit of marble employed in the construction of the Alhambra. The same thing may be said of the Generalife: the Arabs surpassed all other nations in the art of moulding, hardening, and carving plaster, which acquired in their hands the firmness of stucco, without having its disagreeable shiny appearance.

The greater part of these ornaments were made in casts, so that they could be reproduced without any great trouble as often as the symmetry of the place required it. Nothing would be easier than to reproduce an exact likeness of any hall of the Alhambra; to do this, it would suffice to take casts of all the ornaments contained in it. Two arcades of the Hall of Justice, which had fallen down, have been reconstructed by some Granadian workmen, in a manner which leaves nothing to be desired. If we were anything of a millionaire, one of our fancies would be to have a duplicate of the Court of Lions in one of our parks.

On leaving the Hall of Ambassadors, you follow a passage of modern structure, comparatively speaking, and you arrive at the tocador, or dressing-room of the queen. This is a small pavilion situated on the top of a tower, which formerly served the sultanas for an oratory, whence you enjoy the sight of an admirable panorama. At the entrance you perceive a slab of white marble, perforated with small holes to allow the smoke of the perfumes that were burnt beneath the floor to pass through. On the walls are still seen some fantastic frescoes, executed by Bartholomew de Ragis, Alonzo Perez, and Juan de la Fuente. On the frieze the ciphers of Isabella and Philip V. are intertwined, one with another, together with groups of Cupids. It is impossible to conceive anything more coquettish or charming than this closet, suspended as it is, with its little Moorish pillars, and its surbased arches, over an abyss of azure, the bottom of which is studded with the house-tops of Granada, and whither the breeze wafts the perfumes of the Generalife, that enormous tuft of rose-bays blooming on the brow of the neighbouring hills, and the plaintive cry of the peacocks walking on the dismantled walls. How many hours have I not spent there, wrapped in that serene melancholy so different from the melancholy of the north, with one leg dangling over the precipice, and straining my eyes in order to leave unexamined no form or contour of the picture that lay before them, and which they will, doubtless, never see again. No pen or pencil will ever be able to give a true idea of that brilliancy, of that light, of that vividness of hues. The most commonplace tones assume the appearance of jewels, and everything is on the same scale. Towards the end of the day, when the sun is oblique, the most inconceivable effects are produced: the mountains sparkle like heaps of rubies, topazes and carbuncles; dust, which looks like dust of gold, fills the intervals, and if, as is often the case in summer, the labourers are burning stubble in the plain, the smoke, while rising slowly towards the sky, borrows the most magical reflections from the rays of the setting sun. I am surprised that Spanish painters, have, in general, made their pictures so dark, and have almost exclusively employed themselves in imitating Caravaggio and the masters of the sombre school. The pictures of Decamps and Marilhat, who only painted views of Asia or Africa, give a truer idea of Spain than all the pictures fetched, at a great expense, from the Peninsula.

We will traverse the garden of Lindaraja without stopping, for it is nothing but an uncultivated piece of ground, strewed with rubbish, and bristling with brushwood; we will therefore visit, for an instant, the Bath-room of the Sultana, which is coated with square pieces of mosaic-work of glazed clay, and bordered with filigree-work that would make the most complicated madrepores blush. A fountain is in the middle of the room, and two alcoves are in the wall. It was here that the Moorish Sultanas used to come to repose themselves on square pieces of golden cloth, after having enjoyed the pleasure and luxury of an oriental bath. The galleries or balconies, in which the singers and musicians used to be placed, are still seen, and are at a height of about fifteen feet from the ground. The baths themselves resemble large troughs, and each of them is made out of one piece of white marble; they are placed in little vaulted closets, lighted by open-worked stars or roses. For fear of becoming irksome by repetition, we will not speak of the Hall of Secrets, whose acoustic powers are productive of a very curious effect, and the corners of whose walls are blackened by the noses of those inquisitive persons who go and whisper, in one corner, some impertinence that is faithfully carried to another; nor of the Hall of the Nymphs, over the door of which is an excellent bas-relief of Jupiter changed into a swan and caressing Leda, and which said bas-relief is most extraordinarily free in its composition, and very audacious in its execution; nor of the apartments of Charles the Fifth, which are in a dreadful state of devastation, and which possess nothing curious, with the exception of their roofs, studded with the ambitious device of Non plus ultra; but we will go direct to the Court of Lions, the most curious and best preserved part of the Alhambra.

English engravings and the numerous drawings which have been published of the Court of Lions convey but a very incomplete and false idea of it: nearly all of them fail to give the proper proportions, and, in consequence of the over-loading necessitated by the fact of representing the infinite details of Arabian architecture, suggest the idea of a monument of much greater importance.

The Court of Lions is a hundred and twenty feet long, seventy-three broad, while the galleries which surround it are not more than twenty-two feet high. They are formed by a hundred and twenty-eight columns of white marble placed in a symmetrical disorder of four and four, and of three and three, together: these columns, the capitals of which are full of work and still preserve traces of gold and colour, support arches of extreme elegance and of quite a unique shape.

On entering, the Hall of Justice, the roof of which is a monument of art of the most inestimable rarity and worth, immediately attracts your attention, as it forms the back of the parallelogram. There you see the only Arabian pictures, perhaps, which have come down to us. One of them represents the Court of Lions itself, with the fountain, which is very apparent, but gilt: some personages, whom the oldness of the painting does not allow you to distinguish clearly, seem to be engaged in a joust or passage of arms.

The subject of the other appears to be a sort of divan where the Moorish kings of Granada are assembled, and whose white burnous, olive-coloured faces, red mouths, and mysteriously dark eyes, are still easily discernible. These paintings, as is asserted, are executed on prepared leather, pasted on cedar panels, and serve to prove that the precept of the Koran which forbids the likenesses of animated beings being taken was not always scrupulously observed by the Moors, even if the twelve lions of the fountain were not there to confirm this assertion.

To the left, halfway up the gallery, is the Hall of the Two Sisters, which is the fellow to the Hall of the Abencerrages. This name of las Dos Hermanas is given it from two immense flagstones of white Macael marble, equal in size and perfectly alike, which form part of the pavement. The vaulted roof, or cupola, which the Spaniards expressively call media naranja (half an orange), is a miracle of work and patience. It is like a honeycomb, or the stalactites of a grotto, or the bunches of soap-bubbles which children blow out through a straw. The myriads of little vaults, of domes three or four feet high which grow out of one another, crossing and intersecting each other's edges, seem rather the effect of fortuitous crystallization than the work of a human hand; the blue, red, and green in the hollows of the mouldings are still nearly as bright as if they had only just been put on. The walls, like those of the Hall of Ambassadors, are covered, from the frieze to the height of a man, with stucco-work of the most complicated and delicate description. The bottom of the walls is coated with those square pieces of glazed clay of which the black, yellow, and green angles, combined with the white ground, form a mosaic-work. The middle of the apartment, according to the invariable custom of the Arabs, whose habitations seem to be nothing but large ornamented fountains, is occupied by a basin and a jet of water. There are four fountains under the Gate of Justice, a like number under the entrance-gate, and another in the Hall of the Abencerrages, without counting the Taza de los Leones, which, not satisfied with vomiting water through the mouths of its twelve monsters, throws up another torrent towards the sky out of the cap which surmounts it. All this water flows through small trenches made in the flooring of the halls and the pavement of the courts, to the foot of the Fountain of Lions, where it disappears in a subterraneous conduit. This is certainly a kind of dwelling in which you would never be annoyed by the dust, and it is a matter of conjecture how these halls could be inhabited in the winter. The large cedar doors were no doubt then shut, the marble floor was perhaps covered with a thick carpet, and fires of fruit-stones and odoriferous wood lighted in the braseros, and it was thus that the return of the fine season was waited for, which is never long in coming at Granada.

We will not describe the Hall of the Abencerrages, which is almost similar to that of the Two Sisters, and contains nothing particular, with the exception of its ancient door of wood arranged in lozenges, which dates from the time of the Moors. At the Alcazar of Seville there is another one made exactly in the same style.

The Taza de los Leones enjoys, in Arabian poetry, a wonderful reputation, and no terms of praise are thought too high for these superb animals: I must own, however, that it would be difficult to find anything less resembling lions than these productions of African fancy; the paws are mere wedges, similar to those bits of wood, of hardly any shape, which are used to thrust into the bellies of paste-board dogs to make them keep their equilibrium; the muzzles, streaked with transversal lines, doubtless to represent the whiskers, are exactly like the snout of a hippopotamus; and the eyes are designed in so primitive a manner, that they remind you of the shapeless attempts of children. Nevertheless, these twelve lions, if we look upon them not as lions, but as chimeras, as a caprice in ornamenting, produce, with the basins they support, a picturesque effect full of elegance, which aids you to comprehend their reputation, and the praises contained in the following Arabian inscription, of twenty-four verses of twenty-two syllables each, engraved on the sides of the basin into which the waters of the upper basin fall. We ask our readers' pardon for the somewhat barbarous fidelity of the translation: —

"O you who gaze on the lions fixed to their places! remark that they only require life to be perfect. And you to whom this Alcazar and this kingdom fall as an inheritance, take them from the noble hands who have governed them, without displeasure and without resistance. May God preserve you for the work which you come to perform, and protect you for ever from the revenge of your enemy! Honour and glory be yours. O Mohammed! our king, endowed with great virtues, by the aid of which you have conquered all! May God never permit this fine garden, the image of your virtues, to have a rival that surpasses it! The substance which tints the basin of the fountain is like mother-of-pearl beneath the clear sparkling water; the flowing stream resembles melting silver, for the limpidness of the water and the whiteness of the stone have no equals; they might be likened unto a drop of transparent essence on a face of alabaster. It would be difficult to follow its course. Look at the water and look at the basin, and you will not be able to distinguish whether it is the water that is motionless or the marble that ripples. Like the prisoner of love, whose visage is covered with vexation and fear by the look of the envious, so is the jealous water indignant at the stone, and the stone envious of the water. To this inexhaustible stream may be compared the hand of our king, who is as liberal and as generous as the lion is valiant and strong."

It was in the basin of the Fountain of Lions that the heads of the thirty-six Abencerrages, whom the Zegris had drawn there by stratagem, fell. The rest of the Abencerrages would have shared the same fate, had it not been for the devotedness of a little page, who ran at the risk of his life to warn them against entering the fatal court. On having your attention directed to the bottom of the basin, you perceive large reddish spots, an indelible accusation left by the victims against their executioners. Unfortunately, the erudite world declares that the Abencerrages and the Zegris have never existed. With respect to this I am completely guided by romances, popular traditions, and the novel of Monsieur de Châteaubriand, and I firmly believe that these purple-looking marks are blood and not rust.

We had established our head-quarters in the Court of Lions; our furniture consisted of two mattresses, which we rolled up in a corner in the day-time, of a brass lamp, of an earthenware jar, and of a few bottles of sherry that we kept in a fountain to render the wine cool. We slept one night in the Hall of the Two Sisters, and the next in that of the Abencerrages, but it was not without some slight fear, as I lay stretched on my cloak, that I looked at the white rays of the moon, which appeared quite astonished at crossing the yellow and flickering flame of a lamp, shoot through the openings of the roof into the water of the basin and across the shining ground.

The popular traditions collected by Washington Irving in his "Tales of the Alhambra," now came into my mind; the stories of the "Headless Horse" and of the "Hairy Phantom," gravely related by Father Echeverria, appeared to me very probable, above all, when the light was out. The likelihood of the legends appears much greater in the night-time, when these dark places are filled with uncertain reflections, which give to all objects of a vague outline a fantastic appearance: doubt is the son of the day, faith the daughter of the night; and what astonishes me is, that St. Thomas believed in our Saviour after having felt his wound. I am not sure that I myself did not see the Abencerrages walking about in the moonlight, with their heads under their arms, along the galleries; at all events, the shadows of the columns assumed forms diabolically suspicious, and the breeze, as it passed through the arcades, so resembled the breathing of a human being, that it made you doubt.

One Sunday morning, about four or five o'clock, we felt ourselves, while yet asleep, inundated on our mattresses with a fine and soaking rain. This was owing to the conduits of the water-jets having opened earlier than usual, in honour of a prince of Saxe Coburg, who was come to view the Alhambra, and who, they said, was to marry the young queen, as soon as she was of age.

We had scarcely time to rise and dress before the prince arrived, with two or three persons of his suite. He was half mad with rage. The keepers, in order to receive him in a proper manner, had fitted to every fountain the most ridiculous pieces of mechanism and hydraulic instruments imaginable. One of these inventions aimed, by the means of a little white tin carriage and lead soldiers, which were turned by the force of the water, at representing the journey of the queen to Valencia. You may judge of the prince's satisfaction at this ingenious and constitutional piece of refinement. The Fray Gerundio, a satirical journal of Madrid, persecuted this poor prince with marked animosity. It taxed him, among other crimes, with haggling too much about the charges in his hotel bills, and with having appeared at the theatre in the costume of a majo, with a pointed hat on his head.

A party of Granadians came to spend the day at the Alhambra; there were seven or eight young and pretty women, and five or six cavaliers. They danced to the guitar, played at different games, and sung in chorus, to a delightful air, a song by Fray Luis de Leon, which has become very popular throughout Andalusia. As the water-jets had stopped through having begun to shoot forth their silver streams too early, and as the basins were dry, the giddy young girls seated themselves in a round on the edge of the alabaster basin of the Hall of the Two Sisters, so as to form a kind of flower-basket, and, throwing back their pretty heads, again took up simultaneously the burden of their song.

The Generalife is situated at a little distance from the Alhambra, on a pass of the same mountain. Access is gained to it by a kind of hollow road, that traverses the ravine of Los Molinos, which is bordered with fig-trees, having enormous shiny leaves, with palm oaks, pistachio-trees, laurels, and rock roses, of a remarkably exuberant nature. The ground is composed of yellow sand teeming with water, and of wonderful fecundity. Nothing is more delightful than to follow this road, which appears as if it ran through a virgin forest of America, to such an extent is it obstructed with foliage and flowers, and such is the overwhelming perfume of the aromatic plants you inhale there. Vines start through the cracks of the crumbling walls, and from all their branches hang fantastic runners, and leaves resembling Arabian ornaments in the beauty of their form; the aloe opens its fan of azured blades, and the orange-tree twists its knotty wood, and clings with its fang-like roots to the rents in the steep sides of the ravine. Everything here flourishes and blooms in luxuriant disorder, full of the most charming effects of chance. A wandering jasmine-branch introduces a white star among the scarlet flowers of the pomegranate-tree; and a laurel shoots from one side of the road to the other to embrace a cactus, in spite of its thorns. Nature, abandoned to herself, seems to pride herself on her coquetry, and to wish to show how far even the most exquisite and finished art always remains behind her.