The Alhambra 13

The Alhambra 13

The body of the king was interred in a superb sepulchre of white marble;

a long epitaph, in letters of gold upon an azure ground, recorded his

virtues. “Here lies a king and martyr, of an illustrious line, gentle,

learned, and virtuous; renowned for the graces of his person and his

manners; whose clemency, piety, and benevolence were extolled throughout

the kingdom of Granada. He was a great prince; an illustrious captain; a

sharp sword of the Moslems; a valiant standard-bearer among the most

potent monarchs,” &c.

 

The mosque still exists which once resounded with the dying cries of

Yusef, but the monument which recorded his virtues has long since

disappeared. His name, however, remains inscribed among the delicate and

graceful ornaments of the Alhambra, and will be perpetuated in

connection with this renowned pile, which it was his pride and delight

to beautify.

 

 

 

 

THE MYSTERIOUS CHAMBERS

 

 

As I was rambling one day about the Moorish halls, my attention was, for

the first time, attracted to a door in a remote gallery, communicating

apparently with some part of the Alhambra which I had not yet explored.

I attempted to open it, but it was locked. I knocked, but no one

answered, and the sound seemed to reverberate through empty chambers.

Here then was a mystery. Here was the haunted wing of the castle. How

was I to get at the dark secrets here shut up from the public eye?

Should I come privately at night with lamp and sword, according to the

prying custom of heroes of romance; or should I endeavor to draw the

secret from Pépe the stuttering gardener; or the ingenuous Dolores, or

the loquacious Mateo? Or should I go frankly and openly to Dame Antonia

the chatelaine, and ask her all about it? I chose the latter course, as

being the simplest though the least romantic; and found, somewhat to my

disappointment, that there was no mystery in the case. I was welcome to

explore the apartment, and there was the key.

 

Thus provided, I returned forthwith to the door. It opened, as I had

surmised, to a range of vacant chambers; but they were quite different

from the rest of the palace. The architecture, though rich and

antiquated, was European. There was nothing Moorish about it. The first

two rooms were lofty; the ceilings, broken in many places, were of

cedar, deeply panelled and skilfully carved with fruits and flowers,

intermingled with grotesque masks or faces.

 

The walls had evidently in ancient times been hung with damask; but now

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