The Alhambra 10

The Alhambra 10

That there must be some fairy gift about this mysterious little old

woman, would appear from her extraordinary luck, since, notwithstanding

her being very little, very ugly, and very poor, she has had, according

to her own account, five husbands and a half, reckoning as a half one a

young dragoon, who died during courtship. A rival personage to this

little fairy queen is a portly old fellow with a bottle-nose, who goes

about in a rusty garb, with a cocked hat of oil-skin and a red cockade.

He is one of the legitimate sons of the Alhambra, and has lived here all

his life, filling various offices, such as deputy alguazil, sexton of

the parochial church, and marker of a fives-court established at the

foot of one of the towers. He is as poor as a rat, but as proud as he is

ragged, boasting of his descent from the illustrious house of Aguilar,

from which sprang Gonzalvo of Cordova, the grand captain. Nay, he

actually bears the name of Alonzo de Aguilar, so renowned in the history

of the Conquest; though the graceless wags of the fortress have given

him the title of _el padre santo_, or the holy father, the usual

appellation of the Pope, which I had thought too sacred in the eyes of

true Catholics to be thus ludicrously applied. It is a whimsical caprice

of fortune to present, in the grotesque person of this tatterdemalion, a

namesake and descendant of the proud Alonzo de Aguilar, the mirror of

Andalusian chivalry, leading an almost mendicant existence about this

once haughty fortress, which his ancestor aided to reduce; yet such

might have been the lot of the descendants of Agamemnon and Achilles,

had they lingered about the ruins of Troy!

 

Of this motley community, I find the family of my gossiping squire,

Mateo Ximenes, to form, from their numbers at least, a very important

part. His boast of being a son of the Alhambra is not unfounded. His

family has inhabited the fortress ever since the time of the Conquest,

handing down an hereditary poverty from father to son; not one of them

having ever been known to be worth a maravedi. His father, by trade a

ribbon-weaver, and who succeeded the historical tailor as the head of

the family, is now near seventy years of age, and lives in a hovel of

reeds and plaster, built by his own hands, just above the iron gate. The

furniture consists of a crazy bed, a table, and two or three chairs; a

wooden chest, containing, besides his scanty clothing, the “archives of

the family.” These are nothing more nor less than the papers of various

law-suits sustained by different generations; by which it would seem

that, with all their apparent carelessness and good-humor, they are a

litigious brood. Most of the suits have been brought against gossiping

neighbors for questioning the purity of their blood, and denying their

being _Christianos viejos_, _i.e._ old Christians, without Jewish or

Moorish taint. In fact, I doubt whether this jealousy about their blood

has not kept them so poor in purse: spending all their earnings on

escribanos and alguazils. The pride of the hovel is an escutcheon

suspended against the wall, in which are emblazoned quarterings of the

arms of the Marquis of Caiesedo, and of various other noble houses, with

which this poverty-stricken brood claim affinity.

 

As to Mateo himself, who is now about thirty-five years of age, he has

done his utmost to perpetuate his line and continue the poverty of the

family, having a wife and a numerous progeny, who inhabit an almost

dismantled hovel in the hamlet. How they manage to subsist, he only who

sees into all mysteries can tell; the subsistence of a Spanish family of

the kind is always a riddle to me; yet they do subsist, and what is

more, appear to enjoy their existence. The wife takes her holiday stroll

on the Paseo of Granada, with a child in her arms and half a dozen at

her heels; and the eldest daughter, now verging into womanhood, dresses

her hair with flowers, and dances gayly to the castanets.

 

There are two classes of people to whom life seems one long

holiday,--the very rich and the very poor; one, because they need do

nothing; the other, because they have nothing to do; but there are none

who understand the art of doing nothing and living upon nothing, better

than the poor classes of Spain. Climate does one half, and temperament

the rest. Give a Spaniard the shade in summer and the sun in winter, a

little bread, garlic, oil, and garbances, an old brown cloak and a

guitar, and let the world roll on as it pleases. Talk of poverty! with

him it has no disgrace. It sits upon him with a grandiose style, like

his ragged cloak. He is a hidalgo, even when in rags.

 

The “sons of the Alhambra” are an eminent illustration of this practical

philosophy. As the Moors imagined that the celestial paradise hung over

this favored spot, so I am inclined at times to fancy that a gleam of

the golden age still lingers about this ragged community. They possess

nothing, they do nothing, they care for nothing. Yet, though apparently

idle all the week, they are as observant of all holy days and saints’

days as the most laborious artisan. They attend all fêtes and dancings

in Granada and its vicinity, light bonfires on the hills on St. John’s

eve, and dance away the moonlight nights on the harvest-home of a small

field within the precincts of the fortress, which yield a few bushels of

wheat.

 

Before concluding these remarks, I must mention one of the amusements of

the place, which has particularly struck me. I had repeatedly observed a

long lean fellow perched on the top of one of the towers, manœuvring

two or three fishing-rods, as though he were angling for the stars. I

was for some time perplexed by the evolutions of this aërial fisherman,

and my perplexity increased on observing others employed in like manner

on different parts of the battlements and bastions; it was not until I

consulted Mateo Ximenes that I solved the mystery.

 

It seems that the pure and airy situation of this fortress has rendered

it, like the castle of Macbeth, a prolific breeding-place for swallows

and martlets, who sport about its towers in myriads, with the holiday

glee of urchins just let loose from school. To entrap these birds in

their giddy circlings, with hooks baited with flies, is one of the

favorite amusements of the ragged “sons of the Alhambra,” who, with the

good-for-nothing ingenuity of arrant idlers, have thus invented the art

of angling in the sky.

 

 

 

 

THE HALL OF AMBASSADORS

 

 

In one of my visits to the old Moorish chamber where the good Tia

Antonia cooks her dinner and receives her company, I observed a

mysterious door in one corner, leading apparently into the ancient part

of the edifice. My curiosity being aroused, I opened it, and found

myself in a narrow, blind corridor, groping along which I came to the

head of a dark winding staircase, leading down an angle of the Tower of

Comares. Down this staircase I descended darkling,

 

[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE HALL OF AMBASSADORS]

 

guiding myself by the wall until I came to a small door at the bottom,

throwing which open, I was suddenly dazzled by emerging into the

brilliant antechamber of the Hall of Ambassadors; with the fountain of

the Court of the Alberca sparkling before me. The antechamber is

separated from the court by an elegant gallery, supported by slender

columns with spandrels of open work in the Morisco style. At each end of

the antechamber are alcoves, and its ceiling is richly stuccoed and

painted. Passing through a magnificent portal, I found myself in the

far-famed Hall of Ambassadors, the audience chamber of the Moslem

monarchs. It is said to be thirty-seven feet square, and sixty feet

high; occupies the whole interior of the Tower of Comares; and still

bears the traces of past magnificence. The walls are beautifully

stuccoed and decorated with Morisco fancifulness; the lofty ceiling was

originally of the same favorite material, with the usual frostwork and

pensile ornaments or stalactites; which, with the embellishments of

vivid coloring and gilding, must have been gorgeous in the extreme.

Unfortunately it gave way during an earthquake, and brought down with it

an immense arch which traversed the hall. It was replaced by the present

vault or dome of larch or cedar, with intersecting ribs, the whole

curiously wrought and richly colored; still Oriental in its character,

reminding one of “those ceilings of cedar and vermilion that we read of

in the Prophets and the Arabian Nights.”[4]

 

From the great height of the vault above the windows, the upper part of

the hall is almost lost in obscurity; yet there is a magnificence as

well as solemnity in the gloom, as through it we have gleams of rich

gilding and the brilliant tints of the Moorish pencil.

 

The royal throne was placed opposite the entrance in a recess, which

still bears an inscription intimating that Yusef I. (the monarch who

completed the Alhambra) made this the throne of his empire. Everything

in this noble hall seems to have been calculated to surround the throne

with impressive dignity and splendor; there was none of the elegant

voluptuousness which reigns in other parts of the palace. The tower is

of massive strength, domineering over the whole edifice and overhanging

the steep hill-side. On three sides of the Hall of Ambassadors are

windows cut through the immense thickness of the walls, and commanding

extensive prospects. The balcony of the central window especially looks

down upon the verdant valley of the Darro, with its walks, its groves,

and gardens. To the left it enjoys a distant prospect of the Vega; while

directly in front rises the rival height of the Albaycin, with its

medley of streets, and terraces, and gardens, and once crowned by a

fortress that vied in power with the Alhambra. “Ill fated the man who

lost all this!” exclaimed Charles V., as he looked forth from this

window upon the enchanting scenery it commands.

 

The balcony of the window where this royal exclamation was made, has of

late become one of my favorite resorts. I have just been seated there,

enjoying the close of a long brilliant day. The sun, as he sank behind

the purple mountains of Alhama, sent a stream of effulgence up the

valley of the Darro, that spread a melancholy pomp over the ruddy towers

of the Alhambra; while the Vega, covered with a slight sultry vapor that

caught the setting ray, seemed spread out in the distance like a golden

sea. Not a breath of air disturbed the stillness of the hour, and though

the faint sound of music and merriment now and then rose from the

gardens of the Darro, it but rendered more impressive the monumental

silence of the pile which overshadowed me. It was one of those hours and

scenes in which memory asserts an almost magical power, and, like the

evening sun beaming on these mouldering towers, sends back her

retrospective rays to light up the glories of the past.

 

As I sat watching the effect of the declining daylight upon this Moorish

pile, I was led into a consideration of the light, elegant, and

voluptuous character prevalent throughout its internal architecture, and

to contrast it with the grand but gloomy solemnity of the Gothic

edifices reared by the Spanish conquerors. The very architecture thus

bespeaks the opposite and irreconcilable natures of the two warlike

people who so long battled here for the mastery of the Peninsula. By

degrees I fell into a course of musing upon the singular fortunes of the