Théophile Gautier

Travels in Spain (Voyage en Espagne, 1840)

Parts XIII to XV -Seville, Cadíz, Gibraltar, and Valencia

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Contents

• Part XIII: Écija – Córdoba – The Archangel Raphael – The Mosque
• Part XIV: Seville – La Cristina – La Torre del Oro – Italica – The Cathedral – La Giralda – El Polho Sevillano – La Caridad and Don Juan de Marana
• Part XV: Cádiz – A Visit to the Brig ‘Voltigeur’ – The Rateros – Jerez de la Frontera – The Toro Embolado – The Steamboat – Gibraltar – Cartagena – Valencia – La Lonja de la Seda – The Convent of La Merced – The Valencians – Barcelona – The Return

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Part XIII: Écija – Córdoba – The Archangel Raphael – The Mosque

As yet we had only experienced travelling by two-wheeled cart; the four-wheeled equivalent we had yet to try. One of these amiable vehicles was about to leave for Córdoba, already burdened with a Spanish family; we completed the load. Imagine a low-slung affair, equipped with slatted sides, whose floor is simply woven esparto-grass, into which trunks and packets are piled without much concern as to the projecting corners. Over the pile are thrown two or three mattresses, or, to be more precise, in our case two canvas bags within which a few lumps of lightly-carded wool bobbed about; on these mattresses the poor travellers lie, transversally, in a position quite similar (forgive the mundane comparison) to that of calves being carried to market. True, the travellers’ feet are not bound together, but their situation is scarcely improved by that. The whole affair is covered with a large awning stretched over iron hoops, led by a mayoral, and drawn by four mules.

The family with whom we journeyed was that of a well-educated engineer who spoke good French: they were accompanied by a great scoundrel of mongrel appearance, formerly a brigand in José Maria’s band, and now a mine supervisor. This fellow followed the wagon on horseback, a knife in his belt, a rifle at his saddle-bow. The engineer seemed to think highly of him; he praised his probity, with regard to which the man’s former profession gave him little or no concern; It is true that when speaking of José Maria (José Maria Hinojosa Cabacho, known as ‘El Tempranillo’), he told me several times that the aforesaid was a brave and honest man. This opinion, which would seem slightly paradoxical to us as regards a bandit, is shared in Andalusia by the most honourable folk. Spain has retained an Arabian inclination on this point, and brigands there easily pass for heroes, an identification less bizarre than it seems at first, especially in southern regions where imaginations are extremely impressionable. Contempt for death, audacity, composure, prompt and bold decision-making, skill and strength, the kind of greatness which attaches to a man in rebellion against society, all those qualities which act so powerfully on minds that are still scarcely civilised, are they not the qualities that define greatness of character, and are people wrong to admire them so, in men of such energetic nature, even though their use of them is reprehensible?

The road we followed rose and fell, quite steeply, amidst a country studded with hills and criss-crossed by narrow valleys whose depths were occupied by dry stream-beds bristling with enormous stones that jolted us about dreadfully, drawing shrill cries from the women and children. Along the way, I noted various admirably-poetic and colourful sunset effects. In the distance, the mountains took on hues of purple and violet, glazed with gold, of an extraordinary fieriness and intensity; the complete absence of vegetation gives this landscape, composed solely of earth and sky, a character of grandiose bareness and fierce harshness whose equivalent exists nowhere else, and which painters have never rendered successfully. We stopped for a few hours, at nightfall, in a small hamlet of three or four houses, to let the mules rest and allow us to obtain some food. Improvident, like all French travellers, though a five-month stay in Spain should have taught us better, we had brought no provisions from Málaga, so were obliged to sup on dry bread and a little white wine which a woman from the posada was kind enough to supply us with, for Spanish pantries and cellars do not share the abhorrence that nature has, it is said, for a void, and embrace its nothingness with a secure conscience.

At about one in the morning, we set off again, and, despite the dreadful jolting, the children of the mine-employee rolling all over us, and the frequent shocks our bobbling heads received on striking the sides of the wagon, we soon fell asleep. As the sun tickled our noses with a ray like a gilded ear of wheat, we approached Carratraca, an insignificant village, unmarked on the map, possessing only its sulphurous springs effective for treating skin-disease, which attract a rather suspect population, and an unhealthy trade, to that lost place. They play a devilish game of cards there; and, though it was still very early, both cards and coins were already in play. It was somewhat hideous to see these sickly people with greenish earthy faces, full of an ugly rapaciousness, slowly extending their convulsive fingers to seize their winnings. The houses of Carratraca, like all those in the villages of Andalusia, have been whitewashed; which, combined with the bright colour of the tiles, the vine garlands, and the shrubs that surround them, grants them an air of celebration and ease quite different from the ideas we have in the rest of Europe of Spanish uncleanliness, ideas generally false, which can only have come about in connection with a few miserable hamlets in Castile, of which we ourselves possess the equivalent, and worse, in Brittany and the Sologne.

In the courtyard of the inn, my eyes were attracted by crude frescoes of primitive naivety, representing bullfights; around the paintings were coplas (verses) in honour of Paquiro Montes and his quadrille. The name of Montes is quite as popular in Andalusia as that of Napoleon is here; his portrait adorns walls, fans, and snuff-boxes, while the English, great exploiters of the latest fashion, whatever it may be, distribute, from Gibraltar, thousands of scarves on which the features of the famous matador are reproduced, printed in red, purple, and yellow, and accompanied by flattering captions.

Learning from our hunger of the previous day, we bought some provisions from our host, in particular a ham for which he made us pay an exorbitant price. There is much talk of highway robbers; but it is not on the road that danger lies; it is beside it, in the inns, where they slit your throat, where they fleece you in complete safety, without you being able to resort to defensive weapons and fire your rifle at the lad who brings you your bill. I pity the bandits with all my heart; such hoteliers leave them little opportunity for gain, and only hand travellers over to them once they are like lemons from which the juice has been squeezed. In other countries, they make you pay dearly for whatever they sell you; in Spain, you pay for the absence of the same with its weight in gold.

Our siesta over, the mules were harnessed to the wagon, each of us regained our place on the mattresses, the escopetero mounted his little mountain-pony, the mayoral gathered some small stones to throw at the ears of his mules, and we set off once more. The country we crossed was wild without being picturesque: the hills bare, rough, flayed, stripped to the bone; the beds of the stony torrents like scars carved in the ground by the ravages of the winter rain; the olive groves whose pale foliage, caked with dust, stirring not a single thought of ​​greenery or freshness; here and there, from the torn tuff or chalk sides of the ravines, sprang a few tufts of fennel whitened by the heat; over the powdery trail lay the tracks of snakes and vipers, and above all this the sky burning like the roof of an oven, with not a breath of air, not a breath of wind! The grey sand raised by the mules’ hooves fell without a swirl. A hot sun beat down on the canvas awning of our wagon, where we ripened like melons under glass. From time to time, we descended and went on foot for a while, keeping to the shadows cast by the horse or the cart and, having stretched our legs, scrambled back to our places, squashing the children and their mother somewhat, since we could only reach our corner by crawling on all fours under the low arch formed by the hoops above the wagon. Through crossing quagmires and ravines, and taking short-cuts over the ground, we strayed from the correct route. Our mayoral, hoping to recover it, forged ahead, as if he knew perfectly well where he was going; since cosarios and guides only concede that they are lost in the last extremity, and only after leading you five or six leagues from the true path. It is fair to say, however, that nothing was easier than going awry on this fabled track, barely visible, whose course was interrupted at every moment by deep ravines. We found ourselves among wide fields, sparsely sown with olive trees possessing twisted and stunted trunks in fearful attitudes, and lacking any trace of human habitation, or the appearance of any living creature; since morning, we had only encountered a half-naked muchacho, driving in front of him, amidst a torrent of dust, half a dozen black pigs. Night fell. To make matters worse, it was not a moonlit one, and we had only the flickering light of the stars to guide our way.

At every moment, the mayoral left his seat and descended to feel the ground with his hands, hoping to come across a rut, some wheel-mark that would indicate the track; but his searches were in vain, and, most reluctantly, he found himself obliged to inform us that we were lost, having no idea himself where he was: he could not imagine why, having covered the same route twenty times, and could reach Córdoba with his eyes shut. This all seemed rather suspicious, and it occurred to us that we were perhaps exposed to being ambushed. The situation was otherwise unpleasant; we found ourselves caught at night in a deserted countryside, far from any human aid, in the midst of a region renowned for containing more thieves than all the rest of Spain combined. These reflections undoubtedly also occurred to the mining employee and his friend, the former associate of José Maria, who must have been knowledgeable in such matters, because they loaded their rifles with bullets, silently, and did the same with two others in the wagon, handing us one each without saying a word, which was most eloquent. In this way, the mayoral remained unarmed, and, if we made contact with the bandits, he would find himself reduced to powerlessness. However, after wandering at random for two or three hours, we saw a light far off, gleaming beneath the branches like a glowworm; we immediately made it our pole-star, and headed towards it as directly as possible, at risk of overturning with every yard. Sometimes a crevice in the ground hid it from view, and all of nature seemed extinguished; then the light reappeared, and our hopes with it. Finally, we were close enough to recognise the window of a farm, that being the heaven from which our star shone, in the form of a copper lamp. Ox-carts and agricultural implements scattered, here and there, reassured us utterly, because we might easily have attained some haunt of cutthroats, some posada de barateros. The dogs, having noticed our presence, were barking with the full force of their lungs, so that the whole farm was soon in uproar. The occupants emerged, rifles in hand, to identify the cause of this night-time alarm, and, having seen that we were only honest travellers gone astray, they politely suggested that we enter the farm to rest.

It was these good folks’ supper time. A wrinkled, tanned old woman, somewhat mummified, whose skin was creased at every joint like a hussar’s boot, was preparing a gigantic gazpacho in a red clay bowl. Five or six greyhounds of the tallest size, slender, broad-chested, exquisitely groomed, and worthy of a royal pack, followed the movements of the old woman with the most studious attention and the deepest gaze of melancholy longing one can imagine. But the delicious treat was not for them; in Andalusia, it is men and not dogs who eat soup made from bread-crusts soaked in water. Various cats, the absence of whose ears and tails, for in Spain they are docked of these ornamental superfluities, gave them the look of Japanese chimeras, also gazed, but from a greater distance, at these appetizing preparations. A bowl of the said gazpacho, two slices of our own ham, and a few bunches of grapes the colour of amber, made our supper, for which we were obliged to compete with the invasive familiarities of the greyhounds, who, under the pretext of licking us, literally tore the meat from our mouths. We rose, and ate standing, plate in hand; but the devilish creatures stood on their hind legs, placed their front legs on our shoulders, and so found themselves level with the coveted morsels. If they failed to steal them, they gave them at least two or three licks of the tongue, thus releasing the first, most delicate flavours. These greyhounds seemed to be descended directly from a famous dog, one whose history does not however appear in Cervantes’ writings. That illustrious animal held the role of washer-of-dishes in a Spanish fonda, and, when the servant was reproached because the plates were not quite clean, she swore by the great gods that they had nevertheless been washed by seven streams of water, por siete aquas. Siete Aquas was the name of the dog, so designated because he licked the dishes so closely one would have said they had been washed seven times; he must have neglected to do so that day. The greyhounds on the farm were certainly of that same breed.

We were loaned a young lad as our guide who knew the paths perfectly, and led us without incident to Écija, at which we arrived around ten in the morning.

The entrance to Écija is quite picturesque; you arrive over a bridge at the start of which rises an entry-arch, of triumphant effect. The bridge spans a river which is none other than Granada’s Genil, and which is delayed by the ruins of ancient arches, and the dams for the water-mills; once across, you emerge into a square planted with trees, and decorated with two monuments in a baroque style. One is a statue of the Holy Virgin gilded and set on a column whose hollow base forms a kind of chapel, embellished with tubs of artificial flowers, ex-votos, wreaths woven of strips of reed, and all the trinkets of southern devotion. The other is a gigantic Saint Christopher, also of gilded metal, his hand resting on a palm-tree staff proportionate to his size, carrying on his shoulder, with a most prodigious contraction of muscles and an effort sufficient to lift a house, a tiny Baby Jesus of charming delicacy and appeal. This colossus, attributed to the Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano who broke and crushed Michelangelo’s nose with his fist, is perched on a column of Solomonic order (this is the name given here to such twisted pillars), of soft pink granite, whose spiral terminates midway in volutes and extravagant florets. I have a great liking for statues carved in this way; they produce a finer effect, and can be viewed from further off, to their advantage. Ordinary bases are massive and flat-sided, robbing the figures they support of lightness.

Écija, although absent from the tourist itinerary, and generally little known, is nevertheless a most interesting town, with a specific and original appearance. The bell-towers which form the most acute angles of its outline are neither Byzantine, Gothic, nor Renaissance; they are Chinese, or rather Japanese; you might take them for the turrets of some Miao temple dedicated to Confucius, Buddha, or Fu, because they are entirely clad with porcelain or earthenware tiles coloured in the brightest hues, or with green and white glazed tiles arranged in a checkerboard pattern, granting them the strangest aspect in the world. The rest of the architecture is no less chimerical, the love of over-elaboration being taken to its limits. It is nothing but gilt, incrustations, breccias and coloured marbles like crumpled fabric, nothing but garlands of flowers, love-knots, swollen-cheeked angels, and all this illuminated, painted, with a crazed richness, and in sublime bad taste.

The Calle de los Cabelleros, where the nobility live, and which contains the most beautiful mansions, is truly something wondrous in its way; it is hard to believe one is in a real street, amidst houses inhabited by real beings. Balconies, railings, friezes, nothing is straight, all twists and turns, blossoms in florets, volutes, and chicory-leaves. You cannot find a square inch that is not guillochéd, scalloped, gilded, embroidered, or painted; all that the genre known to us by the name rococo has created of the inharmonious and disordered, with a richness and accumulated wealth of display that good French taste, even in the worst eras, has ever known how to avoid. The presence of this Dutch-Chinese pompadour style in Andalusia amuses and surprises. The run-of-the-mill houses are plastered with lime, of a dazzling whiteness which stands out against the dark azure of the sky in a wondrous manner, and with their flat roofs, narrow windows and miradores, they made me dream of Africa, an idea prompted equally by the temperature of thirty-seven degrees Centigrade, usual for the place in ‘cool’ summers. Écija is known as Andalusia’s ‘oven’, and never has an epithet been better deserved: located on low ground, it is surrounded by sandy hills which shelter it from the wind, and reflect the sun’s rays like concentric mirrors. We lived there in the state of being fried; which did not prevent us from valiantly traversing it, in every direction, while waiting for lunch. The Plaza Mayor presents a very original look with its pillared houses, its rows of windows, its arcades and its projecting balconies.

Our parador was quite comfortable, and we were served an almost decent meal which we savoured with a sensuality that was quite appropriate after so many deprivations. A long snooze in a large, well-shuttered, dark, moist room completed our rest, and when, at around three o’clock, we climbed back into the wagon, we appeared serene and completely resigned.

The road from Écija to La Carlota, where we were to sleep, crosses uninteresting country, with an arid and dusty appearance, or at least the season made it appear so, and has left scant trace in my memory. From far to near, a few olive trees and a few clumps of holm-oaks appeared, while aloes showed their bluish foliage to characteristic effect. The mine-employee’s dog (for we possessed quadrupeds in our menagerie, not counting the children) raised a few partridges, two or three of which were downed by my travelling companion. It was the most remarkable incident of that stage of our journey.

La Carlota, at which we halted for the night, is an unimportant hamlet. The inn occupies a former monastery which had first been transformed into a barracks, as occurs almost always in times of revolution, military life being that which is most easily transferred to and embedded in buildings arranged for monastic life. Long arcaded cloisters formed a covered gallery on all four sides of the courtyards. In the midst of one of them yawned the black mouth of an enormous, and very deep well, which promised the delightful treat of very clear, very cold water. Leaning over the edge, I could see that the interior was lined with the most beautiful green plants which had grown in the gaps between the stones. To find some greenery and some freshness, it was indeed necessary to gaze into the wells, since the heat was such one might have believed it produced by a nearby fire. The temperature inside a greenhouse where tropical vegetation is grown alone gives some idea of the heat. The very air burned, and the gusts of wind seemed to carry igneous molecules. I tried to take a walk outside in the village, but the heat, as if from an oven, that greeted me at the door made me retreat. Our supper consisted of jointed chicken lying higgledy-piggledy on a layer of rice, which was as seasoned with saffron as a Turkish pilau, and a salad (ensalada) of green leaves swimming in a flood of vinegary water, starred here and there by a few dollops of oil undoubtedly stolen from the lamp. This sumptuous meal finished, we were shown to our rooms, which were already so occupied that we ended the night in the midst of the courtyard, in our coats, an overturned chair serving for a pillow. There, at least, we were only exposed to mosquitoes; by donning gloves and veiling our faces with a scarf, we escaped with no more than five or six insect bites. It was merely painful, rather than disgusting.

Our hosts possessed slightly sinister faces; but for a long time now we had ceased to pay attention to such things, accustomed as we were to more or less forbidding visages. A fragment of their conversation that we overheard revealed that their feelings matched their looks. They asked the escopetero, thinking that we understood no Spanish, if there was not an ambush prepared for us a few leagues further on. Our former associate of José Maria replied, with a perfectly noble and majestic air: ‘I will not allow it, since these young gentlemen are in my company; moreover, they anticipated being robbed, and carry with them only an amount strictly necessary for the journey, their money being in bills-of-exchange to be drawn in Seville. Besides, they are both tall and strong; as for the mining employee, he is my friend, and there are four rifles in the wagon.’ This persuasive reasoning convinced our host and his acolytes, who on this occasion were content with the ordinary means of robbery permitted to innkeepers in all countries.

Despite all the dreadful tales of brigands reported by travellers and natives of the country, our adventures were limited to this, the most dramatic incident of our long wandering through regions reputed to be the most dangerous in Spain, at a time certainly favourable to that kind of encounter; the Spanish brigand was for us a purely chimerical being, an abstraction, a simple poetic conceit. We never encountered the shadow of a trabuco, and regarded the idea of thieves with an incredulity equal at least to that of the young English gentleman whose story Prosper Mérimée tells, who, having fallen into the hands of brigands who robbed him, persisted in seeing in them only extras from some melodrama posted there to perform for him.

We left La Carlota at about three in the afternoon, and in the evening lodged in a wretched gypsy hut, the roof of which was constructed simply of branches cut and laid, like a kind of coarse thatch, over transverse poles. After drinking a few glasses of water, I lay down quietly in front of the door, on the breast of our common mother Earth, and, gazing at the azure abyss of the sky in which large stars seemed to hover like swarms of golden bees, stars whose glittering formed a luminous haze similar to that produced around their bodies by the swiftly-beating, and thus invisible wings of dragonflies, it did not take me long to fall into a deep sleep, as though I were lying on the softest bed in the world. However, I had only a stone wrapped in my cloak for a pillow, while a few decent-sized pebbles imprinted themselves on the hollow of my back. Never did a more beautiful and serene night swathe the globe in its blue velvet mantle. Around midnight, the wagon set out again and, when dawn broke, we found ourselves no more than half a league from Córdoba.

One might believe, perhaps, from the description of these halts and stages, that a vast distance separates Córdoba from Málaga, and that we travelled far in a journey which lasted no less than four and a half days. The distance is only about twenty Spanish, or thirty French, leagues; but the wagon was heavily loaded, the road abominable, with no relays available to change mules. Add to this the intolerable heat which would have suffocated both animals and people, if we had ventured forth during the hours when the sun was at full strength. However, the slow and painful journey left us with solid memories; excessive speed when travelling takes away all the charm of the route: you are borne away as if in a whirlwind, without having time to see anything. If you arrive almost immediately, you may as well stay at home. For me, the pleasure of a journey is in travelling not in arriving.

A bridge over the Guadalquivir, the river being fairly wide at that point, serves as an entrance to Córdoba on the Écija side. Nearby can be seen the ruined ancient arches of an Arab aqueduct. The bridgehead is defended by a large square tower, crenellated, and supported by casemates of more recent construction. The city gates were not yet open; a crowd of ox-carts, the oxen majestically crowned with yellow and red esparto-grass tiaras; mules and white donkeys loaded with chopped straw; and countrymen in sugar-loaf hats, dressed in brown wool capas descending in front and behind like a priest’s cope, the head inserted through a hole made in the centre of the fabric, waited for the set hour with the phlegm and patience common to Spaniards, who never seem in a hurry. Such a gathering at a Paris barrier would have caused a dreadful uproar, and would have swelled to invective and insult; there was no other sound here than the tinkle of a copper bell on some mule’s collar, or the silvery ringing of the bell or a leading donkey changing position or resting his head on the neck of a long-eared colleague.

We profited from the pause to examine the interior view of Córdoba at leisure. A beautiful gate, in the style of a triumphal arch of Ionic order, and of such excellent taste that one might have believed it to be Roman, formed a most majestic entrance to the city of the Caliphs, though I would have preferred one of those beautiful Moorish archways flared to a heart-shape, such as we saw in Granada. The mosque-cathedral rose above the walls and roofs of the city more like a citadel than a temple, with its high walls denticulated with Arab battlements, and its heavy Catholic dome squatting on an oriental base. It must be confessed that the walls are painted a quite abominable yellow. Without being one of those people who love mouldy, leprous and blackened buildings, I have a particular horror of that infamous pumpkin hue which so charms priests, factory-owners, and religious chapters everywhere, since they never fail to tarnish in this way all the marvellous cathedrals delivered to them. Buildings must be painted and always have been, even in ancient, and purer, times; but a better choice for the nature and hue of their coating is needed.

At last, the doors were opened, and we experienced the necessary preamble of being inspected quite closely by the customs officers, after which we were free to head, with our trunks, for the nearest parador.

Córdoba has a more African appearance than any other city in Andalusia; its streets or rather its alleyways, whose tumultuous pavements resemble the beds of dry torrents, strewn all over with bits of straw that escape the donkeys’ loads, in no way recall the manners and habits of Europe. One walks there between endless chalk-coloured walls, with sparse windows latticed with grilles and iron-bars, and only encounters some beggar with a forbidding face, some devotee hooded in black, or some majo passing by with the speed of lightning, on his brown horse with a white harness, striking thousands of sparks from the paving stones. The Moors, if they could return, would have little to do on resettling there. The idea that one might have previously formed, when thinking of Córdoba, that of a city with Gothic houses and open-work spires, is entirely false. The universal use of lime-plaster gives a uniform colour to all monuments, fills the wrinkles of their architecture, erases the stone-embroidery and prevents one determining their age. Thanks to the use of lime, a wall made a hundred years ago can scarcely be distinguished from one completed yesterday. Córdoba, once the centre of Arab civilisation, is today nothing more than a cluster of small white houses from which spring a few Indian fig-trees with their metallic greenery, and a few palm-trees with their blooming carapaces of foliage, houses which are divided into islands by narrow corridors through which two mules would have difficulty passing abreast. Life seems to have withdrawn from this vast body, formerly animated by the active circulation of Moorish blood; now all that remains is its bleached and charred skeleton. But Córdoba has its mosque, a unique form of architecture, and completely new even to travellers who have already had opportunity to admire the marvels of Arab architecture in Granada or Seville.

Despite its Moorish appearance, Córdoba is nevertheless a Christian city, and placed under the special protection of the Archangel Raphael. From the balcony of our parador, we saw a rather odd monument raised in honour of that celestial patron; one which we wished to examine more closely. The Archangel Raphael, from the top of his column, sword in hand, wings outstretched, glittering with gilt, seemed a sentinel eternally watching over the city entrusted to his guard. The column is made of grey granite with a Corinthian capital of gilded bronze, and rests on a small tower or lantern of pink granite, the base of which is formed by rockeries on which are grouped a horse, a palm-tree, a lion and a most fantastic sea-monster; four allegorical statues complete the decoration. Inside the base is enshrined the coffin of Bishop Pascual, a character famous for his piety and his devotion to the holy archangel.

On a cartouche one may read the following inscription:

But, how do we know, you may ask, that the Archangel Raphael was the actual patron of this ancient city of Abd al-Rahman I, he and not another? I will reply by referring to a romance or lament printed, by permission, in Córdoba, by Don Raphael Garcia Rodriguez, on Calle de la Librería (formerly Calle de los Libreros, and now Diario de Córdoba). This precious document bears at the head a woodcut vignette representing the archangel with open wings, a halo around his head, his travelling staff and his emblematic fish in his left hand, majestically encamped between two glorious vases of hyacinths or peonies, the whole accompanied by an inscription thus conceived: Verdadera Relación y Curioso Romance del Señor San Rafael: Arcángel y Abogado de la peste y Custodio de la Ciudad de Córdoba (True Relation and Curious Legend of the Lord Saint Raphael, Archangel, Advocate during the plague, and Guardian of the city of Córdoba).)

It tells of how the blessed archangel appeared to Don Andrés Roelas, gentleman and priest of Córdoba, and addressed him, in his room, in a speech, the first sentence of which is almost exactly the one engraved on the statue’s column. This speech, which the writers of legend have preserved, lasted more than an hour and a half, the priest and the archangel seated face to face, each on a chair. This apparition took place on the seventh of May in the year of Christ 1578, and it is to preserve the memory of this that the monument was erected.

An esplanade surrounded by railings extends all around this construction and allows you to contemplate it from all sides. Statues, thus placed, have something elegant and slender about them which pleases me very much, and which admirably offsets the bareness of a terrace, public square or overly-large courtyard. The statuette placed on a porphyry column, in the courtyard of the Palais des Beaux-Arts, in Paris, may give some slight idea of the advantage that could be gained, in the way of ornamentation, by this manner of placing such figures, which thereby take on a monumental aspect they would otherwise lack. This thought had already occurred to me, in front of the Blessed Virgin, and the Saint Christopher, of Écija.

The exterior of the cathedral appealed to us but little, and we were afraid of being cruelly disenchanted. Those lines of Victor Hugo’s:

appeared too flattering to us, in advance of the fact, yet we were soon convinced that they were only just.

It was Caliph Abd al-Rahman I who laid the foundations of the Mosque of Córdoba (the Mezquita), towards the end of the eighth century; the work was carried out with such vigour that the construction was finished at the beginning of the ninth: twenty-one years were enough to complete the gigantic building! When we think that a thousand years ago, a work so admirable and of such colossal proportions was executed in such a short time by a people who later fell into the most savage barbarism, the mind is astonished and refuses to believe in the so-called doctrines of progress that are current today; we even feel tempted to side with the opposite opinion when we visit countries formerly occupied by vanished civilisations. For my part, I have always greatly regretted, as I have said before, that the Moors did not remain masters of Spain, which certainly was the loser by their expulsion. Under their domination, if we are to believe the exaggerated popular legends, so gravely collected by historians, Córdoba possessed two hundred thousand houses, eighty thousand palaces and nine hundred baths; and its suburbs comprised twelve thousand villages. Now it has less than forty thousand inhabitants, and seems almost deserted.

Abd al-Rahman I wished to make the Mosque of Córdoba a destination for pilgrimage, a Western Mecca, the foremost temple of Islam after that in Medina in which the body of the prophet rests. I have not yet seen the kasbah of Mecca, but I doubt whether it equals in magnificence and extent the Spanish mosque. One of the originals of the Koran was once kept there, and, an even more precious relic, a bone from Muhammad’s arm.

The common folk even claim that the Sultan of Constantinople still pays tribute to the King of Spain so that Mass is not said in a place especially dedicated to the prophet. This chapel is ironically called by the devotees the Zancarron, a term of contempt signifying ‘the jaw of an ass, or a rotten carcass.’

The Mezquita is pierced by seven doors which are less than monumental, since its very construction is opposed to such ideas, prohibiting the majestic portal imperiously demanded by the sacramental architecture of Catholic cathedrals, and nothing of its exterior prepares you for the admirable sight that awaits within. We will, if you please, pass through the Patio de los Naranjos, an immense and magnificent courtyard planted with monstrous orange trees, and contemporary with the Moorish kings, surrounded by long arcaded galleries paved with marble, and on one side of which stands a bell-tower in mediocre taste, a clumsy imitation of the Giralda tower in Seville, as we were able to see later. Beneath the pavement of this courtyard, it is said, there is an immense cistern. In the days of the Umayyads, one entered the mosque itself on the same level as the Patio de los Naranjos, because the dreadful wall which blocks the view from without was only built later.

The best idea that we can give of this strange building is to say that it resembles a large esplanade enclosed by walls, and planted with rows of columns at intervals. The esplanade is four hundred and twenty feet wide and four hundred and forty long. The columns number eight hundred and sixty; it is said to cover only half of the original mosque.

The impression one experiences on entering this ancient sanctuary of Islam is indefinable and is unconnected with the emotions that architecture ordinarily causes: it seems more as if one is walking through a roofed forest than a building; whichever way one turns, the eye wanders among avenues of columns which extend and intersect as far as the eye can see, much like marble vegetation springing spontaneously from the ground; the mysterious half-light that reigns in this forest further adds to the illusion. There are nineteen arcades width-wise, thirty-six lengthwise, but the openings to the transverse arcades are much smaller. Each nave is formed of two rows of superimposed arches, which appear to cross and intertwine like ribbons, producing the strangest effect. The columns, all of a piece, are barely more than ten to twelve feet high topped by capitals of an Arabian-Corinthian style full of strength and elegance, which recalls the palm-tree of Africa rather than the acanthus of Greece. They are made of rare marble, porphyry, jasper, green and purple breccia, and other precious materials; there are even some ancient ones which came, it is claimed, from the ruins of an ancient temple of Janus. Thus, three religions’ rites are associated with the place. Of those three religions, one has disappeared irrevocably into the abyss of the past with the civilisation it represented; the second has been driven from Europe, where only one foot remains planted, into the abyss of eastern barbarism; the third, having reached its apogee, undermined by the critical spirit, weakens day by day, even in the countries where it once reigned sovereign and absolute; and perhaps the old mosque of Abd al-Rahman will last long enough to see yet a fourth system of belief arise to dwell in the shadow of its arches, and celebrate a new god with other forms and other rites, or rather a fresh prophet, since the god never changes.

Mosque of Cordova

In the days of the Caliphs, eight hundred silver lamps filled with aromatic oils lit these long naves, making the porphyry and polished jasper of the columns gleam, raising scintillations of light from the golden stars of the ceilings and, drawing from the shadows mosaics of crystal and quotations from the Koran intertwined with arabesques and flowers. Among these lamps were the bells of Santiago de Compostela, conquered by the Moors; upended, and suspended from the vault with silver chains, they illuminated the temple of Allah and his prophet, astonished at having become Muslim lamps rather than the Catholic bells they once were. Our gaze then played freely through the long colonnades and one could view, from the rear of the temple, the orange-trees in flower and the fountains of the patio gushing forth a torrent of light made even more dazzling by the contrast with the semi-darkness of the interior. Sadly, the magnificent perspective is obstructed today by the Catholic church, an enormous mass buried heavily at the heart of the Arab mosque. Altarpieces, chapels, and sacristies complicate and destroy the general symmetry. This parasitic church, a monstrous mushroom of stone, an architectural wart borne on the back of the Arab building, was built to the designs of Hernán Ruiz, and is not without merit in itself; we might even admire it elsewhere, but it is forever regrettable that it occupies the space it does. It was built, despite the resistance of the ayuntamiento, by the chapter, due to an unexpected command from Emperor Charles V, who had never seen the mosque. He said, after visiting it some few years later: ‘If I had known, I would never have allowed the ancient work to be touched: you have built what can be seen everywhere, in a place which can be seen nowhere else.’ This just reproach made the members of the chapter bow their heads, but the damage was done. In the choir one can admire an immense work of carpentry, stalls carved from solid mahogany and representing subjects from the Old Testament, the work of Don Pedro Duque Cornejo, who spent ten years of his life on this prodigious task, as one can read on the tomb of the poor artist, lying on a slab a few steps from his work. Speaking of tombs, we noticed a rather singular one, embedded in the wall; it was shaped like a trunk and closed with three padlocks. How will the corpse, locked up so carefully, open the stone locks of its coffin on the day of the Last Judgment; how will it find the keys in the midst of the general disorder?

Until the mid-eighteenth century, the old ceiling of Abd al-Rahman’s day, made of cedar and larch wood, was preserved with its coffers, its soffits, its diamonds and all its oriental magnificence; it was replaced by vaulting, and half-domes, in mediocre taste. The old paving has disappeared under brick which has raised the level of the floor, submerged the shafts of the pillars, and made the general defects, of a building too low for its size, even more apparent.

All this desecration does not prevent the mosque of Córdoba from remaining one of the most marvellous monuments in the world; while, as if to make us feel the mutilation of the rest more deeply, a portion, which is called the Mihrab, has been preserved, as if by a miracle, in its original integrity.

The carved and gilded wooden ceiling with its media-naranja studded with stars, the pierced windows furnished with grilles which gently filter the daylight, the arcade of trefoil columns, the mosaics of coloured glass, the verses from the Koran in letters of gleaming old, which wind among the most gracefully complex ornaments and arabesques, form a whole of a richness, beauty, and magical elegance, the equivalent of which is only found in the Thousand and One Nights, and which yields nothing to any art. Never were lines better chosen, colours better combined: even the Gothic artists, in their finest caprices, in their most precious goldsmith’s-work, betray something unhealthy, emaciated, sickly, which smacks of barbarism and the childhood of art. The architecture of the Mihrab, on the contrary, shows a civilisation at its highest point of development, an artistry at its peak; beyond which lies only decadence. Proportion, harmony, richness and grace, nothing is lacking. From this chapel, one enters a small, excessively-decorated sanctuary, the ceiling of which is made of a single block of marble hollowed out like a conch-shell and carved with infinite delicacy. This was probably the holy of holies, the formidable and sacred place where the presence of Allah seemed more perceptible than elsewhere.

Chapel of the Mosque of Cordova

Another chapel, called the capilla de los reyes moros (la capilla real), where the Caliphs said their prayers, while separated from the crowd of believers, also offers curious and charming details: but it lacks the radiance of the Mihrab, its colours having vanished under an ignoble coat of white.

The sacristies are full of treasure: there are monstrances sparkling with precious stones, silver shrines of enormous weight and incredible workmanship, as large as small cathedrals, candlesticks, golden crucifixes, copes embroidered with pearls: a luxury more than royal and completely Asian.

As we were about to leave, the verger who served as our guide led us, with an air of mystery, to a dark corner, and pointed out, as a supreme curiosity, a crucifix which it is claimed was carved with a fingernail by a Christian prisoner, on a column of porphyry at the foot of which he was chained. To bear witness to the authenticity of the tale, he showed us the statue of the poor captive, a few yards away. Without being more Voltairean than needed as regards legend, I cannot help but think that in the past they had devilishly hard nails, or that porphyry was then extremely soft. This crucifix is ​​not the only one; there is a second one on another column, but much less well-shaped. The verger also showed us an enormous ivory tusk suspended from the centre of a dome by iron chains, like the hunting-trophy of some Saracen giant, some Nimrod from a vanished world; this tusk is said to belong to one of the elephants used to bear the materials during the construction of the mosque. Pleased by his explanation and his complacency, we gave him a few coins, a generosity which seemed to greatly displease the former friend of José Maria, who had accompanied us, and extracted from him this somewhat heretical sentence: ‘Would it not have been better to give the money to a brave bandit rather than a wicked sacristan?’

Leaving the cathedral, we stopped for a few moments in front of a pretty Gothic portal which serves as the facade of the Foundling Hospital. One might admire it anywhere else, but it is eclipsed there by its wondrous neighbour.

Having seen the cathedral, there was nothing to keep us in Córdoba, where our visit had not proved the most stimulating ever. The only entertainment a foreigner can enjoy there is to go swimming in the Guadalquivir, or undergo a shave in one of the numerous barber shops which surround the mosque, an operation which is accomplished with great dexterity, using an enormous razor, its little brother perched on the back of the large oak armchair where you are seated.

Moorish Mill, Cordova

The heat was intolerable, as it was augmented by flames. The harvest had been completed not long before, and it is the custom in Andalusia to burn the stubble once the sheaves have been gathered, so that the ash fertilises the earth. The countryside was ablaze for three or four leagues around, and the wind, which scorched its wings in passing over this fiery ocean, brought us blasts of hot air like those which escape from the mouths of stoves: we were in the position of those scorpions that children surround with a circle of shavings which they then set on fire, and which are forced to make a desperate exit, or commit suicide by turning their sting on themselves. We preferred the former solution.

The wagon in which we had come brought us back by the same route to Écija, where we sought a two-wheeler to take us to Seville. The driver, having viewed us both, thought us too big, strong and heavy to accept, and made all kinds of difficulties. Our trunks were, he said, so excessively heavy that it would take four men to lift them, and they would instantly damage his carriage. We countered this last objection with the greatest of ease by placing the trunks thus slandered on the rear of the carriage ourselves. The fellow having no more objections to make, at last decided to leave.

Flat or vaguely undulating land, planted with olive-trees, whose grey colour is faded further by dust, and sandy steppes with rounded blackish lumps of vegetation here and there, like the galls on leaves, these are the only objects which offer themselves to one’s gaze for several leagues.

At La Luisiana, the entire population were stretched out in front of their doors snoring beneath the stars. Our carriage roused rows of sleepers who leant against the walls, grumbling, and lavishing on us all the richness of Andalusian vocabulary. We supped in a rather ill-looking posada, stocked with more guns and blunderbusses than household utensils. Monstrous dogs stubbornly followed our every movement, seemingly awaiting the signal before tearing us apart with their teeth. The hostess seemed most surprised at the calm voracity with which we dispatched our tomato omelette. She seemed to find the meal superfluous, and to regret serving food that would be of no benefit to us. However, despite the sinister appearance of the place, our throats were not slit, and they had the clemency to allow us to continue our journey.

We encountered sandier and sandier ground, into which the wheels of the carriage sank up to their hubs. We now understood why our driver had been so concerned with our specific gravity. To relieve the horse, we dismounted and, around midnight, after following a path which climbed, in a zigzag, the steep planes of a mountain, we arrived at Carmona, where our bed awaited. Lime-kilns cast long reddish reflections on this rock-strewn ramp producing Rembrandt-like effects of admirable power and picturesqueness.

The room we were given was decorated with badly-coloured lithographs representing different episodes of our July Revolution of 1830, the storming of the Hôtel de Ville, etc. This pleased us, and almost moved us: it was like a little piece of France framed and hanging on the wall. Carmona, which we barely had time to look at as we clambered back into the carriage, is a small town as white as fresh cream, to which the campaniles and towers of an old convent (Santa Clara) of Carmelite nuns give a rather picturesque appearance: that is all there is to say concerning the place.

From Carmona onwards, the succulents, cacti and aloes, which had abandoned us, reappeared bristlier and more ferocious than ever. The landscape was less bare, less arid, more rugged, the heat had lost a little of its intensity. Soon we reached Alcalá de los Panaderos (Alcalá of the Bakers, now Alcalá de Guadaíra), famous for the excellence of its bread, as its name indicates, and its bullfights involving novillos (young bullocks), attended by aficionados from Seville during the holidays. Alcalá de los Panaderos is well-situated at the bottom of a small valley through which a river (the Guadaíra) winds; it is sheltered by a hill slope, on which the ruins of an ancient Moorish palace still stand. We were approaching Seville. Indeed, the Giralda, the cathedral bell-tower, soon appeared on the horizon, first its windowed lantern was revealed, then its square tower; a few hours later we passed under the Puerta de Carmona (no longer extant), whose arch framed a background of dusty light where wagons, donkeys, mules and ox-carts crossed paths, amidst waves of golden vapour, some arriving, the others departing. A superb aqueduct (Caños de Carmona), of Roman appearance, raised its stone arcades to the left of the road; on the right the houses grew closer and closer together; we were in Seville.

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Part XIV: Seville – La Cristina – La Torre del Oro – Italica – The Cathedral – La Giralda – El Polho Sevillano – La Caridad and Don Juan de Marana

There is a Spanish proverb about Seville which is often cited:

I admit, in all humility, that this proverb would seem more accurate if applied to Toledo or Granada than to Seville, where we found nothing especially wondrous, except the cathedral.

Seville is sited on the banks of the Guadalquivir, in a large plain, and this is where its name Hispalis came from, which means ‘flat ground’ in Carthaginian, if we are to believe the scholars Benito Arias Montano and Samuel Bochart. It is a vast, diffuse city, wholly modern, cheerful, smiling, lively, and must indeed seem delightful to the Spaniards. A greater contrast to Córdoba one could not find. Córdoba is a dead city, an ossuary of houses, an open-air catacomb, over which abandonment sifts its whitish dust; the rare inhabitants who show themselves at the street-corners seem like apparitions who’ve misread the time. Seville, on the contrary, has all the energy and buzz of life: a maddened cloud of noise hovers over it at every instant of the day; Seville barely has time to rest. Yesterday occupies it little, tomorrow even less, it is all of the moment; memory and hope are the recourse of unhappy folk, while Seville is happy: it lives to play, while its sister, Córdoba, seems to dream gravely, in silence and solitude, of Abd al-Rahman, its great captain, and all its vanished splendours, flaming beacons lost in the night, of which only the ashes remain.

To the great disappointment of travellers and antiquarians, whitewash reigns supreme in Seville; the houses don their shirts of lime three or four times a year, which gives them an air of neatness and cleanliness, but conceals from the investigator’s eye the remains of those Arab and Gothic sculptures which formerly decorated them. Nothing could be less varied than this network of streets, where the eye sees only two hues: the indigo of the sky, and the chalk white of the walls, against which the azure shadows of the neighbouring buildings are silhouetted, for in hot countries shadows are always blue and not grey, so that objects seem illuminated on one side by moonlight and on the other by the sun’s rays; however, the absence of any dark tints produces a city full of cheerfulness and life. Doors closed by iron-grilles reveal patios within, decorated with columns, mosaic paving, fountains, flower tubs, shrubs, and frescoes. As for the exterior architecture, it is nothing remarkable; the height of the buildings rarely exceeds two or three stories, and there are barely a dozen facades of artistic interest. The streets are set with small stones like those in all the towns of Spain, but are lined with pavements of fairly-wide flat stone slabs over which the people progress in file; The pavement is always yielded to women, in the event of an encounter, with that exquisite show of politeness natural to Spaniards even of the lowest class. The women of Seville justify their reputation for beauty; they almost all look alike, as is common in pure lineages of a marked type: their eyes slope up towards the temples, are fringed with long brown eyelashes, and produce an effect of light and dark unknown in France. When a woman or a young girl passes you by, she lowers her eyelids slowly, then suddenly raises them, grants you a look of unbearable brilliance, then turns her glance about, and lowers her eyelashes again. The Hindu dancer (bayadère) Amany, when dancing the Pas des Colombes, can alone give an idea of ​​these incendiary glances which the Orient has bequeathed to Spain; we have no terms to express this manoeuvre of the pupils: the verb ojear is missing from our vocabulary. These glances, so bright and abrupt, which almost embarrass the stranger, are of no special significance however, and are focused indifferently on the first object that comes along: a young Andalusian woman will gaze with those passionate eyes at a cart passing by, a dog chasing its tail, or children playing at bullfighting. Compared to theirs, the eyes of the people of the North are dull and empty; therein the sun has failed to leave its reflection.

Pointed canine teeth, which resemble in whiteness those of young Newfoundland dogs, grant something wild and Arabian of extreme originality to the smiles of the young women of Seville. The forehead is high, domed, polished; the nose thin, tending a little to the aquiline; the mouth brightly-tinted. Sadly, the chin sometimes ends in too abrupt a curve, an oval divinely begun. Slightly thin shoulders and arms are the only imperfections that the most demanding of artists could find in the Sevillanas. The fineness of limb, the smallness of the hands and feet, leave nothing to be desired. Without any poetic exaggeration, one could easily find in Seville women whose feet a child could contain in its hand. The Andalusians are very proud of this quality, and wear their shoes accordingly: the similarity between their shoes and Chinese lotus shoes is considerable.

is a verse of praise as frequent in their romances as a complexion of roses and lilies is in ours.

These shoes, usually made of satin, barely cover the toes, and appear to have no sides or back, being trimmed at the heel with a small piece of ribbon of the same colour as the stockings. In our country, a little girl of seven or eight years old would be unable to wear the shoes of a twenty-year-old Andalusian woman. Thus, they never stop making jokes about the feet and shoes of Northern women: such as ‘with the shoes a German woman wears to a ball, we’d make a boat for six to sail the Guadalquivir’; or ‘a picadores wooden stirrups might serve as slippers for Northern ladies’, and a thousand other andaluzades of this kind. I defended the feet of our Parisian women as best I could, but met only with disbelief. Sadly, the Sevillanas are only Spanish as regards the head and feet, in their mantillas and shoes; dresses in French colours will soon be in the majority. The men are dressed like fashion plates. Sometimes, however, they wear small white cotton jackets with matching trousers, a red belt and an Andalusian hat; but this is rare, while the costume is also far from picturesque.

It is to the Alameda del Duque (Alameda de Hércules), that one goes to breathe some fresh air during the intervals of the theatre, which is close by, and above all to La Cristina, where it is a delight to see the pretty Sevillanas in small groups of three or four, parading about and taking their exercise, between seven and eight in the evening, accompanied by their gallants in attendance or expectation. They have something of a nimble, lively, dashing air, prancing rather than walking. The agility with which their fingers open and close their fans, the brilliance of their gaze, the assurance of their bearing, the undulating suppleness of their waists, gives them a most individual physiognomy. There may be in England, France, or Italy, women of more perfect, more regular beauty, but certainly there are none prettier or more piquant. They possess to a high degree what the Spanish call sal. It is something of which it is difficult to give an idea in France, a compound of nonchalance and liveliness, of bold responses and childish manners, a grace, a spiciness, a ragout, as the painters say, which is something separate from beauty, and often preferred to it. Thus, in Spain they say to a woman: ‘How salty, salada, you are!’ No compliment is worth more.

La Cristina (Jardines de Cristina) is a superb promenade on the banks of the Guadalquivir, with a salon paved with large slabs, surrounded by an immense white marble bench adorned with an iron back, shaded by oriental plane trees, with a labyrinth, a Chinese pavilion, and planted with all kinds of northern trees: ash, cypress, poplar, willow, which are admired by Andalusians, as palm-trees and aloes might be admired by Parisians.

At the borders of La Cristina, pieces of sulphurous cord wound around poles grant a ready light to smokers, so that one is free from the annoyance of those children bearing hot embers who pursue you while crying: Fuego!  rendering the Prado in Madrid unbearable.

Nonetheless, to this walk, pleasant though it is, I prefer the river-bank itself, which offers a spectacle ever-lively and constantly renewed. Amidst the current, where the water is deepest, are stationed brigs and commercial schooners, with slender masts and rigging, whose dark silhouettes stand out clearly against the lighter background of the sky. Little vessels pass each other on the river in all directions. Sometimes a boat bears a company of young men and women, who descend the river playing the guitar and singing coplas whose rhymes are dispersed by the wild breeze, and whom walkers applaud from the bank. The Torre del Oro, a sort of octagonal tower with two upper stories diminishing in size, and crenellated in the Moorish style, whose foot bathes in the Guadalquivir near the landing stage, and which rises into the azure air amidst a forest of masts and ropes, ends the perspective most happily on the near side. This tower, which scholars claim to be of Roman construction, was formerly connected to the Alcazar by sections of wall which were demolished to make way for La Cristina, and supported, in the days of the Moors, one of the ends of the iron chain which barred the river, and whose other end was attached to the masonry buttresses opposite. The name Torre del Oro comes, it is said, from the fact that gold brought from America by the Spanish galleons was stored there, under lock and key.

Torre del Oro

We walked there every evening, and watched the sun set behind the suburb of Triana, which is on the other side of the river. A palm-tree of noblest form raised its canopy of leaves into the air as if to greet the declining star. I have always loved palm-trees and am never able to see one without feeling transported into the poetic world of the patriarchs, amidst Oriental enchantments, and Biblical magnificence.

Each evening, as if to reawaken our sense of reality, on returning to Calle de la Sierpe (Calle Sierpes), where Don César Bustamente, our host, lived, with his wife, who was Jerez born and had the most beautiful eyes and longest hair in the world, we were accosted by well-dressed fellows, of most decent appearance, with eye-glasses and watch-chains, who asked us to visit, rest and take refreshments with some muy finas, muy decentes people, who had charged them with offering an invitation. These honest people seemed very surprised at first by our refusals, and, thinking that we had not understood, went into more explicit detail; and then, on finding their efforts wasted, contented themselves with offering us cigarettes and sight of ‘the Murillo’, for Murillo, I must tell you, is the honour and also the bane of Seville. His is the only name pronounced there. The meanest bourgeois, the leanest abbot, owns at least three hundred Murillos of the best kind. What is this murky thing? A Murillo in his vaporous style. And this? A Murillo in his warm style. And this third one? A Murillo in his chillier style. Murillo, like Raphael, has three styles, which means that any type of painting can be attributed to him, and leaves admirable latitude to amateurs who wish to fill their galleries. At every street corner, one comes across the corner of a picture-frame: it is a thirty-franc Murillo, which an Englishman would pay thirty thousand francs for. ‘See, sir knight, what design! What colours! It is a perla, a perlita.’ How many pearls have been shown me that were not worth framing! How many ‘originals’ which were not even good copies! That does not prevent Murillo from being one of the most admired painters in Spain, and the world. But here I have strayed far from the banks of the Guadalquivir; let us return there.

A pontoon bridge joins the two banks, and connects the suburbs to the city. Over this, one passes, in order to visit, near the town of Santiponce, the remains of Italica, birthplace of the emperors Trajan, Hadrian and Theodosius and, it is claimed, the poet Silius Italicus. One can view a Circus, in ruins yet still distinctive in shape. The vaults where ferocious beasts were kept, and the gladiators’ stalls, are perfectly recognisable, as are the corridors and stands. All of this is built of cement, with stones embedded in the mixture. The stone cladding was probably pillaged to be used for more modern constructions, since Italica was long Seville’s quarry. Some rooms have been cleared, and serve as refuge, during the hours of scorching heat, for herds of bluish pigs which escape, grunting, between the legs of visitors, and are today the only population of the ancient Roman city. The most complete and interesting vestige which remains of all its vanished splendour is a large mosaic, which has been surrounded by a wall, and which represents the Muses and Nereids. When it is wet with water, its colours are still most brilliant, though, through greed, the most precious stones have been removed. We also found, in the rubble, some statue fragments executed in quite good style, and there is no doubt that skilfully-directed excavations would yield important discoveries. Italica is about a league and a half from Seville, and, by means of a carriage, it is an excursion that one can easily cover in an afternoon, unless one is a fanatical antique dealer, and wishes to examine, one by one, every old stone suspected of bearing an inscription.

The Puerta de Triana (not extant) also has Roman pretensions and takes its name, it is said, from the emperor Trajan. The appearance is monumental; it is of Doric order, with double columns on each side of the arch, and is decorated with the royal arms, and surmounted by a pyramid. It is overseen by its own alcalde (magistrate), and serves as a prison for the nobility. The Puertas del Carbon y del Aceite (not extant) are also worth a look. On the Puerta de Jerez (not extant) the following inscription can be seen:

Seville is encircled by crenellated walls, flanked at intervals by large towers, several of which are in ruins, and surrounded by ditches which are now almost entirely infilled. The walls, which would offer scant defence against modern artillery, produce, with their saw-toothed Arabic battlements, a rather picturesque effect. The city’s foundation, like that of every Roman wall and encampment, is attributed, as the verse declares, to Julius Caesar.

In a square neighbouring the Puerta de Triana, I saw a most singular spectacle. It was a family of bohemians camped in the open air, constituting a group that would have delighted Jacques Callot. Three sticks arranged in a triangle formed a rustic tripod, which supported, over a large fire scattering tongues of flame and spirals of smoke in the breeze, a pot with strange and dubious contents, such as Goya might have added to his depictions of the cauldrons employed by the witches of Barahona de las Brujas. Near this improvised hearth, sat a swarthy, copper-skinned gypsy-woman with a hook-nosed profile, and naked to the waist, proving her complete disregard for appearances; her long black hair fell in a wayward manner down her thin, yellow back and over her bistre-coloured forehead. Through her disordered locks gleamed large oriental eyes of mother-of-pearl and jet, eyes so mysteriously contemplative that they grant even the most bestial and degraded physiognomy a poetic quality. Around her, there wallowed three or four squealing brats in a most primitive state, black as mulattoes, with pot-bellies and spindly limbs which made them look more like human quadrupeds than bipeds. No little Hottentot was ever more hideously dirty. Her state of nudity is not rare in Spain and shocks no one. We often met beggars whose only clothing was a scrap of blanket, and haphazard fragments of underclothes; in Granada and Málaga, I saw boys of twelve to fourteen years of age wandering the squares, with less covering than Adam when he left the earthly paradise. The suburb of Triana is full of encounters of this kind, since it contains many gitanos, folk who have the most advanced opinions in matters of casual dress; the women cook in the open air, and the men indulge in smuggling, mule-shearing, horse-trading, etc., when they are not perpetrating something worse.

The Cristina, the Guadalquivir, the Alameda de Duque, Italica, and the Moorish Alcazar, undoubtedly arouse one’s interest: but the real wonder of Seville is its cathedral, which is indeed a surprising building, even after viewing the cathedrals of Burgos and Toledo, and the Mosque in Córdoba. The chapter which ordered its construction summarized their plan of campaign in this sentence: ‘Let us raise a monument that will make posterity think us madmen.’ A splendidly broad aim, and well-executed. Having been granted carte-blanche, in this way, the architects and artists performed wonders, and the canons, to hasten the completion of the building, sacrificed their whole income, reserving only enough to fund the bare necessities required for living. O thrice holy canons! Sleep sweetly beneath your slabs, in the shadow of your beloved cathedral, while your souls bask in paradise, in choir-stalls probably less well sculpted than its own!

The most extravagant, monstrous, prodigiously-sized Hindu pagoda-temples fail to even approach the dimensions of Seville’s cathedral. It is a hollow mountain, an upturned valley; Notre-Dame de Paris could walk with its head upright in the central nave, which is of enormous height; pillars as tall as towers, yet appearing slender enough as to make one shudder, rise from the ground, or hang from the vaults like the stalactites in a giant’s cave. The four side-naves, though less high, could house churches along with their bell-towers. The retablo mayor, or main altar, with its ascending stories, its superposed architecture, its rows of statues filling each level, is an immense construction in itself, rising almost to the vault. The paschal candle, as large as a ship’s mast, weighs two thousand and fifty pounds. The bronze candlestick that supports it is akin to the column in the Place Vendôme; it is an imitation of the candlestick in the Temple of Jerusalem, as it appears on the bas-reliefs of the Arch of Titus; everything is of grandiose proportions. Twenty thousand pounds of wax, and an equivalent amount of oil, are burned each year in the cathedral; the wine which is used for the consumption of the holy sacrifice amounts to a fearful quantity of eighteen thousand seven hundred and fifty litres. It is true, though, that five hundred Masses are said every day at the eighty altars! The catafalque which is used during Holy Week, and which is called the monument, is nearly a hundred feet high. The organs, of gigantic proportions, look like the basalt colonnades of Fingal’s cave, and yet the thunderous hurricanes that escape their pipes as big as siege cannons seem like melodious murmurs, the chirping of birds and seraphim beneath those colossal warheads. There are eighty-three windows with stained glass coloured after cartoons by Michelangelo, Raphael, Durer, Pietro Perugino, Pellegrino Tibaldi and Luca Cambiaso; the oldest and most beautiful were executed by Arnao de Flandes the Younger, a famous glassmaker. The most recent, which date from 1819, show how greatly art has degenerated since the glorious sixteenth century, that supreme era of the world’s art, in which the tree of humanity bore its most beautiful flowers and its most delicious fruits. The choir, in the Gothic style, is embellished with turrets, spires, pierced niches, figurines, and foliage; an immense and meticulously-executed creation which astounds the imagination and can no longer be comprehended today. We remain truly confounded in the presence of such works, and wonder, in deep concern, whether vitality is, with every new century, ebbing from the aging world. This prodigious work of talent, patience, and genius, at least bears the name of its author, and admiration finds someone on whom to focus. On a panel on the Gospel side, the left, is traced this inscription: Este coro fizo Nufro Sanchey entallador que Dios haya año de 1475: ‘Nufro Sánchez, sculptor, whom God has in his care, made this choir in 1475’.

To try to describe the riches of the cathedral, one by one, would be a great folly: it would take a year to view it thoroughly, and one would still not have seen everything; volumes would not suffice to merely create a catalogue. Sculptures in stone, wood, and silver, by Juan de Arphe, Pedro Millán, Juan Montañés, and Pedro Roldán; and paintings by Murillo, Francisco de Zurbarán, Pedro de Campaña, Juan de las Roelas, by Luiz de Vargas, Pedro de Villegas Marmolejo, the Francisco Herreras the Older and Younger, by Juan de Valdès Leal, and by Goya, clutter the chapels, sacristies, and chapter houses. One is so overwhelmed by magnificence, repelled or intoxicated by masterpieces, one no longer knows where to turn; the desire to, and impossibility of, seeing everything provokes a kind of feverish dizziness; you wish to remember everything, yet every minute you sense a name escaping you, a lineament fading from your brain, one painting eclipsing another. Desperate appeals are made to one’s powers of recall, one urges oneself not to omit a single glance; the least rest, the hours for dining or sleeping, seem to be thefts committed against oneself, because a blind imperative necessity drives you onward; and yet soon one must leave, for the steamboat’s boiler has already been fired, the water hisses and boils, the chimneys disgorge their white smoke; tomorrow you will leave all these wonders behind, perhaps never to see them again!

Not having space to speak of everything, I will limit myself to mentioning Murillos’ painting of the Vision of Saint Anthony of Padua, which adorns the baptistry chapel. The magical art of painting has never been taken further. The saint in ecstasy is kneeling in the midst of the cell, all the meagre details of which are rendered with that vigorous reality which characterises the Spanish school. Through a half-open door, we glimpse one of those white arcaded cloisters so conducive to daydreaming. The heights of the painting, drowned in a pale, transparent, vaporous light, are occupied by a group of angels of truly ideal beauty. Attracted by the force of prayer, the Child Jesus descends from the clouds towards the upraised arms of the saint, whose head, raised in a spasm of celestial ecstasy, is bathed in radiance. I place this divine painting above Murillo’s Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Curing the Sick to be viewed at the Academy of Madrid (the Prado), above his Moses Striking the Rock, and above all this master’s depictions of virgin and child, however beautiful and pure they may be. Who has not seen the Vision of Saint Anthony of Padua has not viewed the crowning work of this artist of Seville; it is as if one imagined one knew Rubens yet had never seen, in Antwerp, his Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy.

All the architectural styles meet in Seville Cathedral. The severe Gothic, the Renaissance style, that which the Spaniards call plateresco (plateresque) or goldsmith’s work, and which is distinguished by a madness of ornamentation and indescribable arabesques, the Rococo, the Greek, the Roman; not one is missing, since every century has built its chapel, its retablo, with the taste peculiar to itself, and the building is not even complete, for several of the statues filling the niches of the portals, representing patriarchs, apostles, saints, and archangels, are only made of terracotta and placed there as if provisionally. On the side of the Patio de los Naranjos, at the summit of the unfinished portal, one currently sees a steel crane, symbolic of the fact that the building is unfinished, and that the work is to be renewed later. A like gallows also appears atop the Cathedral of Saint Peter at Beauvais; but when will its weight of stone, slowly hoisted into the air by returning workers, make its pulley, rusted for centuries, creak again? Perhaps never; since the celestial aspiration of Catholicism has ceased, and the sap which caused this flowering of cathedrals to emerge from the soil no longer rises from the trunk to the branches. Faith, which doubts nothing, wrote the first stanzas of all these great poems in stone and granite; reason, which doubts everything, did not dare complete them. The architects of the Middle Ages are like some tribe of religious Titans who piled Pelion on Ossa, not to dethrone the God of thunder, but to admire the gentle figure of the Virgin Mother, smiling at the Child Jesus, more closely. In our age, where all is sacrificed for a crude and stupid feeling of well-being, we no longer understand those sublime pangs of the soul reaching for infinity, translated into spires, needles, arrows, pinnacles, those ogives (pointed arches) stretching their stone arms towards heaven, and meeting, above the heads of the prostrate people, like gigantic hands in supplication. All the neglected cathedral treasures which garner no profit make economists shrug their shoulders pityingly. Even the congregation begins to calculate how much the gold of the ciborium is worth; those who previously did not dare raise their eyes to the gleaming sun of the Host, tell themselves that pieces of glass could perfectly well replace the diamonds and precious stones of the monstrance; Seville’s cathedral is hardly frequented except by tourists, beggars and dreadful old women, atrocious dueñas clad in black, with owl-like faces, skull-like smiles, and spidery fingers, who cannot move without a clicking of aged bones, medals, and rosaries, and who, under the pretext of begging for alms, whisper I know not what terrible proposals in one’s ears, concerning dark hair, ruddy complexions, burning glances, and ever-blooming smiles. Spain itself is no longer Catholic!

The Giralda, which serves as the cathedral’s campanile and dominates over all its bell-towers, is an ancient Moorish tower built by an Arab architect named Ali al-Ghumari, said to be the inventor of algebra, to which his treatise Al-Jabr gave the name (it was in fact written by Muhammad al-Khwarizmi). The effect is charming and most original; the pink colour of the brick and the whiteness of the stone of which it is built, give it an air of cheerfulness and youth in contrast with the age of a building which dates back to the year 1171; a very respectable one, at which a tower can allow itself a few wrinkles and forego a fresh complexion. The Giralda, as it is today, is over three hundred and forty feet high and fifty feet wide on each side; the walls are smooth up to a certain elevation, where the Moorish windows begin with their balconies, trefoils and white marble columns, framed by large diamond-shaped brick panels; the tower formerly ended in a roof of varnished tiles in different colours topped by an iron bar decorated with four golden metal knobs of prodigious size. This work was replaced in 1568 by the architect Hernán Ruiz the Younger, who elevated the tower of Al-Ghumari the Moor a hundred feet further towards the pure light of the heavens, so that a bronze statue (the Giraldillo, or the Triumph of the Victorious Faith), could gaze towards the mountain ranges and talk freely with the passing angels. To build a bell-tower on top of a tower was to conform in every way to the intentions of that admirable chapter of which we have spoken, who wished to seem mad in the eyes of posterity. Hernán Ruiz’ work is made up of three stories, the first of which is pierced with windows, in the embrasure of which bells hang; the second, surrounded by an openwork balustrade, bears on the sides of its cornice these words: Turris Fortissima Nomen Dni Proverb.18; the third is a kind of dome or lantern on which revolves the gigantic figure of Faith, in gilded bronze, holding a palm in one hand and a standard in the other, which serves as a weather-vane and justifies the name Giralda given to the tower. This statue was cast by Barthélémy Morel (after a design by Luis de Vargas). It can be seen from extremely far away, and when it gleams in the azure heavens, in the rays of the sun, it truly seems like a seraph hanging in the air.

One climbs the Giralda by a series of ramps without steps, so gentle and easy that two men on horseback were able to climb it from the foot to the summit, from which one enjoys an admirable view. Seville is at one’s feet, sparkling white, with its bell-towers and turrets making vain efforts to rise to the pink-brick level of the Giralda. Further off, the plain extends, over which the Guadalquivir maintains its course; one can see Santiponce, La Algaba and other villages. In the background, to the north and west is the Sierra Morena chain with its jagged peaks clearly visible despite the distance, such is the transparency of the air in this admirable country. On the other side, towards the south and east, the bristling sierras above Jimena de la Frontera, Zahara de la Sierra, and Móron de la Frontera, are tinged with the richest hues of lapis-lazuli and amethyst; an admirable panorama riddled with light, flooded with sunlight, and of a dazzling splendour.

A substantial number of column-sections cut to the shape of boundary-markers, and linked by chains, with the exception of a few where gaps are left free for circulation, surround the cathedral. Some of these columns are ancient, obtained from either the ruins of Italica, or the remains of the ancient mosque whose site the current church occupies, and of which only the Giralda, a few sections of wall, and one or two arches remain, one arch serving as a door to the courtyard of the orange-trees. The Casa Lonja de Mercaderes (the commercial exchange), a large square perfectly regular building, designed by the weighty and sombre Juan de Herrera, boredom’s architect, to whom we owe the Escorial, the saddest monument in the world, is also surrounded by similar boundary-markers. Isolated on every side, and possessed of four identical facades, the Casa Lonja is located between the cathedral and the Alcazar. The Archives of the Indies are kept there, including the letters of Christopher Columbus, Francisco Pizarro, and Hernán Cortés; but all these treasures were guarded by such fierce dragons that we had to content ourselves with inspecting the outsides of the boxes and files, arranged in mahogany cabinets like packets of cloth. And yet, it would be a simple task to place five or six of the most precious handwritten items under glass, and offer them up to the gaze of curious travellers.

The Alcazar, or ancient palace of the Moorish kings, though very beautiful and worthy of its reputation, offers few surprises to those who have already seen the Alhambra in Granada. There are still those endless small white marble columns, painted and gilded capitals, heart-shaped arches, panels of arabesque intertwined with legends from the Koran, cedar and larch doors, stalactite-like domes, and fountains adorned with sculptures which may differ to the eye, but whose description cannot convey their infinite detail and minute delicacy. The Hall of Ambassadors (Salón de Embajadores), whose magnificent doors remain, in all their integrity, is perhaps more beautiful and richer than that of Granada; sadly, the idea occurred to someone of ​​employing the gaps between the columns supporting the ceiling to accommodate a series of portraits of the kings of Spain from the earliest days of the monarchy to the present. Nothing in the world could appear more ridiculous. The ancient kings, with their breastplates and golden crowns, still cut a passable figure; but the last of them, hair powdered white, in modern uniform, produce a most grotesque effect; I will never forget a certain queen with spectacles on her nose and a little dog on her knees, who must feel very out of place there. The so-called baths of Maria de Padilla (Baños de Doña María de Padilla), the mistress of Pedro I, who lived in the Alcazar, are still as they were in Arab times. The vaults of the drying room have not suffered the slightest alteration. Charles V, has left too many traces of his passage in the Alcazar in Seville, as in the Alhambra in Granada. This mania for building one palace inside another is one of the most commonplace and most disastrous, and that it has destroyed so many historic monuments merely to replace them with insignificant buildings is forever to be regretted. The grounds of the Alcazar contain gardens designed in the old French style, with yew trees trimmed to the most bizarre and twisted shapes.

Hall of Don Pedro, Alcazar, Seville

Since we are visiting the monuments, let us visit for a few moments the Tobacco Factory (Real Fábrica de Tabacos) which is only a stone’s throw away. This vast building, well-suited to its use, contains a large number of machines for grating, chopping, and grinding tobacco, which emit the sound of a multitude of mills, and are operated by between two and three hundred mules. This is where el polbo sevillano is produced, an impalpable, penetrating dust of a golden yellow colour, with which the marquesses of the regency liked to sprinkle their lace ruffs: the strength and volatility of this tobacco are such, that one sneezes on the threshold of the rooms in which it is prepared. It is sold by the pound and half-pound in tin boxes. We were shown the workshops where the cigars are rolled into leaves. Between five and six hundred women are employed in the work. On setting foot in the room, we were assailed by a hurricane of noise: they were talking, singing, and arguing all at once. I have never heard such a commotion. Most were young, and some were very pretty. The extreme casualness of their dress left one free to appreciate their charms. Some held the end of a cigar, resolutely, in the corner of their mouths with the aplomb of hussar officers; others (oh Muse, come to my aid!) others... chewed tobacco like old sailors, since they were allowed to take as much as they could consume on the spot. They earn four to six reales per day. The Seville cigarera is a type, like the manola of Madrid. One must see her, on a Sunday or on the day of a bullfight, in her dress fringed with immense ruffles, her sleeves trimmed with jet buttons, and with the puro (cigar) whose smoke she inhales, and which she passes from time to time to her male companion.

To have done with all this architecture, let us pay a visit to the celebrated Caridad Hospital (Hospital de la Caridad), founded by a real-life Don Juan (Miguel de Mañara), and by no means a mere character in fable, as one might have believed. A hospice founded by Don Juan! But, yes! This is how it happened. One night our Don Juan, emerging from an orgy, encountered a procession on its way to the church of San Isidoro: its penitents, masked in black, bearing yellow wax candles, a cortege more mournful and more sinister than any ordinary funeral. ‘Who is the dead man? Is it some husband killed in a duel by his wife's lover, or some honest father who held on to his heirs’ bequests too long? cried Don Juan, heated by the wine. ‘The dead man,’ replied one of the coffin bearers, ‘is none other than Don Juan de Mañara, whose funeral we are going to perform; come with us, and pray for him.’ Don Juan, having approached, recognized by the light of the torches (for in Spain the dead lie with their faces uncovered) that the corpse not only possessed his likeness, but was none other than himself. He followed his own bier into the church, recited the prayers with the mysterious monks, and the next day was found unconscious on the pavement of the choir. The event made such an impression on him that he renounced his wild life, donned the religious habit and founded the hospital in question, where he died amidst an odour of sanctity. The Caridad contains a few Murillos of the greatest beauty: Moses Striking the Rock and The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, two immense compositions of the richest order, and Saint John of God Carrying a Sick Man in which the saint is depicted being supported by an angel, which is a masterpiece of colouring and chiaroscuro. Here the painting by Juan de Valdés Leal, known as Los Dos Cadaveres (or Finis Gloriae Mundi), may be found, a bizarre and terrible painting compared to which Edward Young’s darkest conceptions (in his ‘Night Thoughts’, illustrated by William Blake) may pass for happy idylls.

The Plaza de Toros was closed to our great regret, since the Seville bullfights are, according to aficionados, the most brilliant in Spain. This place is unique in being semi-circular, at least in regard to the boxes since the arena is round. It is said that a violent storm destroyed the one side, which has not been rebuilt since. This arena provides a wonderful sight of the cathedral, and forms one of the most beautiful views one can imagine, especially when the stands are populated by a glittering crowd, adorned with the most vivid colours. Ferdinand VII founded a bullfighting school in Seville, where students were trained first on bulls made of cardboard, then on novillos (young bullocks) with padding on their horns, and finally on serious adversaries, until these pupils were worthy of appearing in public. I know not whether the revolution has respected this royal and despotic institution. Our hopes disappointed, all that was left to do was depart; our places were booked on the steamboat for Cádiz, and we embarked amidst the tears, cries, and wailing of the mistresses or lawful wives of the soldiers, a change of garrison, who were travelling with us. I know not if their grief were sincere, but that ancient despair, that desolation of the Jewish women in the days of Babylonian captivity, could never have appeared so violent!

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Part XV: Cádiz – A Visit to the Brig ‘Voltigeur’ – The Rateros – Jerez de la Frontera – The Toro Embolado – The Steamboat – Gibraltar – Cartagena – Valencia – La Lonja de la Seda – The Convent of La Merced – The Valencians – Barcelona – The Return

After travelling by mule, on horseback, in carts, in carriages, the steamboat seemed something miraculous, like the magic carpet of Fortunatus (in the anonymous folk-tale) or the arrow of Abaris the Hyperborean (in the Greek myth). To devour space like that speeding arrow, and this without difficulty, without fatigue, without being shaken about, while walking on deck, and watching lengths of the coastline pass before you, despite the vagaries of the wind and the tide, is undoubtedly one of the finest innovations of the human mind. Perhaps for the first time, I found that civilisation had its good side, I will not say its beautiful side, because everything it produces is unfortunately tainted with ugliness, and thereby betrays its complex and diabolical origin. Compared to a sailing ship, the steamboat, convenient as it is, appears hideous. The former looks like a swan spreading its white wings to the breeze, the other like an iron stove charging off at full speed astride a windmill.

Regardless, the paddles adorning its wheels, aided by the current, drove us swiftly towards Cádiz. Seville was already sinking below the horizon; but, due to a magnificent optical effect, while the roofs of the city seemed to merge with the land, and fade into the distance, the cathedral appeared to expand and took on enormous proportions, like an elephant standing amidst a flock of slumbering sheep; and it was only then that I fully comprehended its immensity. The tallest bell-towers did not overtop its nave. As for the Giralda, remoteness gave to its pink bricks the hues of amethyst and adventurine, which are incompatible with the architecture of our sad northern climes. The statue of Faith sparkled on the summit like a golden bee on the tip of a tall blade of grass. A bend in the river quickly hid the city from our sight.

The banks of the Guadalquivir, at least on the path to the sea, lack the enchanting aspect granted to them by poets’ and travellers’ descriptions. I know not where they found those groves of orange-trees and pomegranate-trees with which they perfume their romances. In reality, one sees only low, sandy, ochre-coloured shores, yellow and troubled waters, whose earthy hue can scarcely be attributed to rainwater, rainstorms being so rare in that country. I had already noticed, with regard to the Tagus, this lack of clarity, which perhaps derives from the large quantities of dust that the wind precipitates, and from the friable nature of the terrain crossed. The harsh blue of the sky is also a factor, and its extreme intensity makes the tones of the water appear earthy, and less vibrant. Only the sea can match the transparency and azure of such a sky. The river continued to widen, the banks decreased in height and grew flatter, and the general appearance of the landscape was reminiscent of the physiognomy of the Scheldt between Antwerp and Ostend. This Flemish memory in the midst of Andalusia was quite strange in the context of our being beside the Guadalquivir with its Moorish name; but it presented itself to my mind so naturally that the resemblance must be real, for I swear I had scarcely thought since of the Scheldt, or of the trip I made to Flanders some six or seven years ago. For the rest, there was, little movement on the river, and what could be seen of the countryside beyond the banks seemed uncultivated and deserted; it is true that we were in the depths of a heatwave, a season during which Spain is little more than a vast heap of ashes without vegetation or greenery. And all the river-birds, the herons and storks, one leg folded beneath, the other half-submerged in the water, awaited the passage of some fish in such complete immobility that one might have taken them for birds made of wood and mounted on a stick. Boats with lateen sails set like pairs of compasses went up and down the river with and against the wind, a phenomenon I have never really understood, though it has been explained to me several times. Some of these boats carried a third small sail in the shape of an isosceles triangle, fore or aft of the two larger sails: rigged thus they are very picturesque.

Around four or five in the evening, we passed Sanlúcar de Barrameda located on the left bank of the river. A large building, its architecture modern in style, built in the regular form of a barracks or a hospital which constitutes the only charm of today’s constructions, bore on its frontispiece some inscription which we were unable to read, which was hardly a cause for regret. This square box with its many windows was built by Ferdinand VII. It must be a customs-house, warehouse, or some similar fabrication. Below Sanlúcar, the Guadalquivir widens out and takes on the proportions of an arm of the sea, whose shores become nothing but increasingly narrow lines between sky and water. It has grandeur, but of a somewhat dull and monotonous nature, and we would have been exceedingly bored without games, dances, and the castanets and tambourines of the soldiers. One of them, who had attended performances given by an Italian troupe, imitated the actors’ and especially the actresses’ words, songs, and gestures, with great joy and enthusiasm. His comrades laughed till they held their sides, and seemed to have forgotten, completely, those touching scenes on departure. Perhaps their weeping Ariadnes had already wiped their eyes and were laughing just as heartily. The passengers on board the steamboat took part, freely, in this hilarity and belied as best they could the reputation for imperturbable seriousness attributed to Spaniards by the rest of Europe. The fashions of the days of Philip II, of black clothing, starched collars, a devout demeanour, and a cold and haughty look, ended longer ago than is generally thought.

With Sanlúcar behind us, by an almost imperceptible transition, we entered the Mediterranean; the billows lengthened to regular waves, the water changed colour, and so did some of the passengers’ faces. Those predestined to that strange disease called seasickness begin to seek out solitary corners, and leant in melancholy fashion against the rail. For my part, I perched myself, bravely, on the cabin next to the paddle-wheels, studying my sensations conscientiously; for, never having made the crossing, I did not yet know if I would be condemned to those inexpressible tortures. The pitching and tossing surprised me a little at first, but I soon recovered, and regained my serenity. Emerging from the Guadalquivir, we turned to larboard and followed the coast, which was far enough away that it could only be distinguished with difficulty, since evening was nigh, and the sun descending majestically into the sea, on a glowing staircase formed by five or six levels of clouds of the richest purple.

Darkness fell as we arrived in Cádiz. The lanterns of the vessels at anchor in the harbour, the lights of the city, and the stars in the sky, glittered on the lapping waves, in millions of flakes of gold, silver, and fiery flame; in areas of calm the lanterns’ reflections, as they stretched out over the sea, traced long paths of light to magical effect. The enormous mass of the ramparts stood out strangely amidst the deep shadows.

So as to disembark, we had to be transferred, with all our belongings, into small boats whose owners, with dreadful vociferations, fought over the travellers and their trunks in much the same way as the coachmen in Paris carrying folk to Montmorency or Vincennes. We found it difficult not to be separated, my comrade and I, as one of them pulled us to the left, and the other dragged us to the right, with an energy that was scarcely reassuring, especially if we consider that these contests were executed on ‘canoes’ which the slightest movement caused to oscillate, like a swing, under the feet of the wrestlers. However, we arrived without incident on the quay, and, after having endured a visit to the customs office, which was nestled beneath the city gate in the thickness of the wall, we found our way to our lodgings in the Calle San Francisco.

As you might imagine, we were up with the dawn. Entering an unknown city at night is one of the things that most irritates the curiosity of the traveller: one employs one’s greatest efforts to make out the configuration of the streets, the shape of the buildings, and the physiognomy of the rare passers-by, through the shadows. At least, in this way, the element of surprise is maintained, while next day the city appears to you in its entirety, suddenly, like a theatre-set when the curtain rises.

No pigments of the painter’s writer’s palette are bright enough, no hues luminous enough to convey the dazzling impression that Cádiz made on us on that glorious morning. Two unique shades caught one’s eye: of blue and white; but a blue as vivid as turquoise, sapphire, cobalt, and everything excessive of azure one could imagine; and a white as pure as silver, milk, snow, marble, or the best, crystallized cane-sugar! Blue filled the sky, and was echoed by the sea; the whiteness was the city. One could not imagine anything more radiant, more sparkling, with a light more diffuse yet more intense at the same moment. Truly, what we call the sun, in France, is nothing more than a pale night-light, at the point of death, on a sick person’s bedside table.

The houses in Cádiz are much taller than those of other cities in Spain, which is explained by the conformation of the land, a narrow islet attached to the mainland by a thin strip of land, and the desire for a sea view. Each house rises, on tiptoe to look, with curiosity, over the shoulder of its neighbour, and raise its head above the dense circuit of ramparts. As this is not always sufficient, almost all the terraces have at their corner a turret, a belvedere, sometimes topped with a small dome; these aerial viewpoints enliven the city’s outline with innumerable serrations, and produce the most picturesque effect. All is plastered with lime, and the whiteness of the facades is further enhanced by long vermilion lines which serve to separate the houses and mark the floors: the balconies, protruding some distance, are enveloped by a large cage of glass, adorned with red curtains and filled with flowers. Some of the side streets end in empty space and lead, seemingly, to the sky. These azure voids are charmingly unexpected. Apart from its cheerful, lively and bright appearance, Cádiz has nothing remarkable to show in terms of architecture. Its cathedral, a vast sixteenth century building, though lacking neither nobility nor beauty, yields no surprises after the wonders of Burgos, Toledo, Córdoba and Seville: it is in the style of the cathedrals of Jaen, Granada and Málaga; classical architecture with the neater, more slender proportions Renaissance artists preferred. Its Corinthian capitals, of a more elongated form than the canonical Greek version, are very elegant. As for paintings and ornamentation, richly, excessively, burdened, and in bad taste, there is a surfeit. However, I ought not to pass over in silence a wood sculpture of a little crucified martyr, a seven-year-old child, painted with perfect feeling and exquisite delicacy. Enthusiasm, faith, pain, mingled, in the childish proportions of the delightfully-carved face, in the most touching way.

We went to view the bullring, which is small and reputed to be one of the most dangerous arenas in Spain. To reach it, one crosses gardens filled with gigantic palm-trees of various species. Nothing is more noble, more regal, than a palm-tree; its great star of leaves at the summit of its fluted column shining so splendidly in the lapis lazuli of an oriental sky! The scaly trunk, as slender as if it were in a tight corset, appears so like the waist of a young girl; its bearing is so majestic, so elegant! The palm and the oleander are my favourite trees; the sight of a palm-tree or an oleander arouse joy in me, an astonishing gaiety. It seems to me that one cannot be unhappy in their shadow.

The bullring in Cádiz lacks continuous tablas. Here and there are placed wooden screens behind which toreros who are too hotly pursued retreat. This provision appeared to us to offer far less security.

The stalls were pointed out to us which hold the bulls during the fight; they are in a kind of cage made of large beams, closed with a door which is raised like a mill or weir gate. To excite the bulls’ rage, they are prodded with spikes, and rubbed down with nitric acid; indeed, every means is sought to poison their mood.

Due to the excessive heat, the bullfights were suspended; a French acrobat had set up his trestles and ropes in the centre of the arena ready for the next day’s entertainment. It was here that Lord Byron watched the bullfight of which he gives, in the first canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a most poetic description, though one which does little credit to his knowledge of bullfighting.

Cádiz is enclosed by a narrow circuit of ramparts which clasp its waist like a granite corset; a second line of reefs and rocks protects it from attack, and from the waves, and yet, a few years ago, a terrible storm shattered and overthrew these formidable walls, which are more than twenty feet wide, in several places, immense sections of which still lie, here and there, about the shore. On the glacis of these ramparts, lined at intervals with stone sentry-boxes, one can circumambulate the town, to which only one gate opens on the landward side, and watch the canoes, feluccas, and fishing boats, lateen-rigged or otherwise, on the open sea or within the harbour, toing and froing, carving out graceful arcs, traversing each other’s path, changing tack, and toying with the wind like albatrosses; vessels which seem on the horizon nothing more than dove feathers borne through the sky by a wild breeze. Several of these vessels, like the ancient Greek galleys, have at the bow, on each side of the boat, a large eye painted in natural colours; these eyes seem to watch over the vessel’s progress, and grant that part of the boat, in appearance, a vaguely human profile. Nothing is more animated, livelier, or more cheerful than this seeming glance.

On the mole, in the direction of the customs gate, there are signs of unparalleled activity. A colourful crowd, in which each country in the world is represented, swarms, at all hours, at the feet of the columns topped with statues which decorate the quay. From the white skin and red hair of an Englishman, to the dark skin and black woolly hair of an African, and passing through all the intermediate shades of coffee, copper and golden-yellow, all varieties of the human species are gathered there. In the harbour, in the near distance, three-masters, frigates, and brigs sway, hoisting the flag of their respective nation each morning, to the beat of a drum; the merchant ships, and steamboats, whose chimneys belch bicoloured steam, berth closer to the quay because of their lower tonnage, and form the foreground of this vast marine portrait.

I possessed a letter of introduction to the commander of the French brig Voltigeur, stationed in Cádiz harbour. Upon presenting it, the captain, Adelbert Lebarbier de Tinan, graciously invited me, and two other young people, to dinner on board, the next day at about five. At four, we were on the pier, seeking a boat and a skipper to convey us from the quay to the ship, a twenty-minute trip at most. I was most surprised when the man asked for a duro (five pesetas) instead of the usual fare of a peseta. In my nautical ignorance, seeing the sky perfectly clear, and the sun glittering as on the world’s first day, I had innocently imagined the weather was fine. That was my naive conviction. On the contrary, the weather was atrocious, and I was not long in realising it to be so when the boat made its first few tacks. The sea was broken, choppy, and dreadfully hostile. The wind was enough to dehorn an ox. We leapt about as if we were in a nut shell, and took on water at every instant. After a few minutes, we enjoyed a foot-bath that quickly threatened to turn into a hip-bath. The spray from the oars drenched the collar of my coat, and ran down my back. The skipper and his two acolytes swore, stormed, and tore the sheets and rudder from one another’s hands. One wished this, the other that, and I foresaw the moment when they would fall to blows. Our situation was critical enough that one of them began mumbling part of a prayer to some saint, whose name I forget. Fortunately, we were approaching the brig, which was swaying nonchalantly at anchor, seeming to watch, with an air of disdainful pity, the convulsive movements of our little boat. Finally, we docked alongside, and it took us a further ten minutes or more before we could seize the grappling-hooks, and climb on deck.

‘That’s what we call brave exactness,’ said the commander with a smile as he watched us clamber aboard, streaming with water, our hair weeping like a sea god’s beard, and ordered that we be given trousers, shirts, jackets, in short, a complete change of clothing. ‘That will teach you to trust poetic description; you think squalls cannot exists without orchestral thunder, waves mingling their foam with the clouds midst the rain, and lightning bolts splitting the deepest darkness. Be assured that, quite probably, I will only be able to land you ashore in two to three days’ time.’

The wind was indeed dreadfully violent, the rigging quivered like a set of violin strings beneath the bow of a frantic musician, the bell clanged with a sharp sound, and its clapper threatened to break off, and fall in pieces to the bed of the harbour; the pulleys creaked, squeaked, hissed, and, at times, uttered sharp cries which seemed to spring from a human throat. Two or three sailors doing penance in the shrouds, for I know not what peccadillo, met with all the difficulty in the world in not being swept away.

All this did not prevent us from enjoying an excellent dinner, washed down with the best of wines, and seasoned with the kindest words, though with diabolical Indian spices also, enough to make even someone with hydrophobia drink. Next day, as we were unable to launch a boat to fetch fresh provisions from shore due to the bad weather, we had a dinner no less pleasant, but whose peculiarity was that each dish contained some ingredient of much earlier date. We ate peas stored since 1836, fresh butter from 1835, and cream from 1834, all of miraculous freshness and perfectly preserved. The heavy weather lasted two days, during which I walked on deck, never tiring of admiring its cleanliness as if maintained by a Dutch housewife, the finish of every detail, the genius of organisation displayed by that prodigy of human thought, which we simply call a vessel. The copper of the carronades sparkled like gold; the planks gleamed like the best varnished piece of rosewood furniture. Indeed, every morning the vessel is cleansed, and even if it is raining heavily the deck is still washed-down; inundated, mopped and sponged, with the same scrupulous thoroughness.

After two days the wind died down, and we were taken ashore in a longboat rowed by ten oarsmen. Only, my black coat, heavily impregnated with sea water, was unable to regain its elasticity when it had dried, and always remained dotted with shiny grains of mica and as stiff as a salted cod.

The appearance of Cádiz from the sea is delightful. To see it, sparkling white between the azure of the sea and that of the sky, makes one think of an immense crown of silver filigree; the dome of the cathedral, painted yellow, seems like a vermeil tiara set in its midst. The flower vases, scrolls, and turrets that adorn the houses vary infinitely in their contours. Byron characterised the physiognomy of Cádiz wonderfully in a single touch:

‘Do thou, amid the fair white walls,

If Cádiz yet be free,

At times from out her latticed halls

Look o’er the dark blue sea’

(Stanzas composed during a Thunderstorm. First published, Childe Harold, 1812)

In the same poem, the English poet expresses his opinion on the somewhat questionable virtue of Gaditan women, which he was undoubtedly right to entertain. As for myself, without pursuing that delicate question here, I shall limit myself to saying that they are very beautiful and of an individual type; their complexion has that paleness of polished marble which brings out the purity of the features so well. Their noses are less aquiline than the Sevillians, their foreheads are small, the cheekbones not very prominent, and they are close to the Greeks in physiognomy. They also seemed broader to me than other Spanish women, and taller. Such is at least the result of the observations that I was able to make while walking around the Salon, on the Plaza de la Constitución and at the theatre, where, incidentally, I saw Pierre Zaccone’s Gamin de Paris (El Poluello de Paris) very well-acted by a woman in man’s clothing, who danced boleros with great fire and enthusiasm.

However, as pleasant as Cádiz is, the idea of ​​being enclosed, firstly by the ramparts, then by the sea, within its narrow isle, makes you long to escape. It seemed to me that the sole thought that islanders must entertain is to visit the mainland: which also explains the perpetual travels of the English, who exist everywhere, except in London, where there are only Italians and Poles. Indeed, the Gaditans are perpetually busy crossing from Cádiz to El Puerto de Santa María and vice versa. A light general-purpose steamboat, leaves every hour, while sailing boats, and canoes, attend on and provoke the wanderer. One fine morning, my companion and I, reflecting on the fact that we had a letter of recommendation from one of our Gaditan friends to his father, a rich wine merchant in Jerez de la Frontera, which read: ‘Open your heart, your house, and your cellar to the two gentlemen who present this’, we climbed aboard the steamer, to the cabin of which was affixed a poster announcing, that very evening, a bullfight interspersed with comic interludes, which was to take place at El Puerto de Santa María. It would complete our day, admirably. With a carriage, one could go from El Puerto de Santa María to Jerez, stay there a few hours, and return in time for the bullfight. After a hasty lunch at the Fonda Vista Alègre, which could not be better deserving of its name, we set out with a guide, who promised to be back at five for the funcion: which is the name for any spectacle, whatever it may be, in Spain. The road to Jerez crosses a mountainous, rugged, hillocky plain, as dry as pumice stone. In spring, this desert is said to be covered with a rich carpet of greenery dotted with wild flowers. Broom, lavender, and thyme perfume the air with their aromatic emanations; but at the time of year we visited, all trace of vegetation had disappeared. Here and there one could barely see a few mops of dry, yellow, thready grass, coated all over with dust. The track, if the local chronicle is to be believed, is very dangerous. Rateros are often encountered there, that is to say countrymen who, without being professional bandits, seize the opportunity when it presents itself, and cannot resist the pleasure of robbing an isolated passerby. The rateros are more to be feared than the true bandits, who conduct themselves with the regularity of an organised troop subject to a leader, and who spare travellers so as to put them under fresh pressure on some other route; and then, none resist a band of twenty-five men or so on horseback, well-equipped, and armed to the teeth, instead of a couple of rateros, by whom one might be killed or at least injured; and then the ratero might be embodied in the herdsman who passes by, the ploughman who greets you, the ragged and tanned muchacho who sleeps, or pretends to sleep, in a thin strip of shade, in a crevice of the ravine, or your calesero himself, leading you into an ambush. One knows not; danger is everywhere and nowhere. From time to time, the police employ agents to assassinate the most dangerous and best known of these rascals, in bar-room quarrels which are provoked on purpose, and this method of dealing justice, though of a somewhat summary and barbarous nature, is the only practicable one, given the absence of evidence and witnesses, and the difficulty of catching such culprits in a country where it would take an army to arrest a single man, and where counter-policing is carried out with such intelligence and passion, by a people whose ideas of yours and mine are scarcely more advanced than the Kabyles of Algeria. However, here, as everywhere else, the bandits prophesied failed to appear, and we arrived in Jerez without incident.

Jerez, like all the small Andalusian towns, is whitewashed from head to toe, and owns to nothing remarkable by way of architecture other than its bodegas, or wine-stores, immense cellars with large tiled ceilings, and long white walls deprived of windows. The person to whom we were recommended was absent, but the letter had its effect, and we were immediately taken to the cellar. Never could a more glorious spectacle be presented to the eyes of an alcoholic; we walked along aisles of barrels arranged four or five rows high. We were obliged to sample all of this, at least the main variants, and there are an infinite number of main variants. We tried a whole range, from eighty-year-old sherries, dark, and thick, with the taste of muscat, and the strange tint of the green wine of Béziers, to dry sherries the colour of pale straw, smelling of flint, and like to Sauternes. Between these two extremes, there is a whole register of intermediate wines, with hints of gold, burnt-topaz, and orange-peel, extremely variable in taste. Only, they are all more or less fortified with brandy, especially those destined for England, where they would not be found strong enough without that; since, to please British palates, wine must be disguised as rum.

After so complete a study of the oenology of sherry, we found it difficult to return to our carriage with a majestic uprightness of attitude sufficient to avoid compromising France vis-à-vis Spain, it being a question of international self-esteem. To fall or not to fall, that was the question, a question much more embarrassing than that which gave so much pause to the Prince of Denmark. I must say with legitimate pride that we went to our carriage in a most satisfactory state of perpendicularity, and gloriously represented our dear country in our battle against the headiest wine of the Peninsula. Thanks to the rapid evaporation produced by a heat of thirty-nine to forty degrees Centigrade, on our return to El Puerto de Santa María we were able to discuss the most delicate points of psychology, and appreciate the fiercest passages of the bullfight. This event, where most of the bulls were embolados, that is to say, had padding on the ends of their horns, and in which only two were killed, delighted us with a host of comical incidents. The picadors, dressed as mock Turks, with Mameluke-style cotton trousers, jackets with rayed suns on the back, and turbans like Savoy-cakes, were reminiscent of those extravagant Moorish figures that Goya sketched with three or four strokes of the burin on the plates of La Tauromaquia. One of these clowns, while waiting for his turn to place his dart, blew his nose on the corner of his turban with admirable philosophy and phlegm. A wicker steamboat, covered in canvas, and drawn by a team of donkeys, dressed in red shirts and wearing tricorn hats as best they could, was driven to the centre of the arena. The bull rushed at this contraption, shattering and overturning it, and hurling the poor fools into the air in the most amusing fashion in the world: I also saw, in that arena, a picador who killed the bull with a spear, in the handle of which was concealed a device whose detonation was so violent that all three, bull, horse and rider fell backwards; the first, because it was dead, the other two by the strength of the recoil. The matador was an old rogue dressed in a worn workman’s blouse, and clad in yellow stockings, which were falling down, and looked like Jeannot from the comic-opera (Jeannot et Colin), or a garishly costumed acrobat. He was knocked over several times by the bull, to which he dealt such ill-performed blows that the use of the media-luna became necessary to put an end to it. The media luna, as its name indicates, is a crescent-shaped blade attached to a pole, similar to the pruning-hooks used to trim large trees. It is used to slice the animal’s hocks, it then being finished-off, without risk. Nothing is more ignoble and more hideous: when risk is eliminated, disgust follows; it is no longer a battle, but mere butchery. The poor creature, dragging itself along on its stumps, like Hyacinthe (Louis-Hyacinthe Duflost) at the Variétés, when he acts the role of the Dwarf in the sublime parade of Les Saltimbanques (by Dumersan and Varin), offers the saddest spectacle that one can see, and one desires only one thing, that it might regain enough strength to disembowel its stupid tormentors with a last blow of its horn.

The wretched part-time matador reserved to himself a special task, that of eating. He consumed seven or more dozen hard-boiled eggs, a whole sheep, a calf, etc. Observing his leanness, one had to believe that he worked very infrequently. A large crowd attended the event; the many majos’ were richly dressed; the women, of a completely different type from those of Cádiz, covered their heads with long scarlet shawls, rather than mantillas, which perfectly framed their beautiful olive faces, their complexions almost as dark as those of mulatto women, faces in which the mother-of-pearl of the eyes and the ivory of the teeth stood out with singular brilliance. Their pure lines, their tawny, golden tone, would lend themselves wonderfully to the painter’s art, and it is unfortunate that Louis Léopold Robert, that Raphael of the world of countryfolk, died at so young an age, and never travelled in Spain.

Wandering about the streets, we came upon the market square. It was evening. The shops and booths were illuminated by lanterns or hanging lamps, and made a charming sight, starred and spangled everywhere with brilliant points of light. Watermelons with green rind and pink pulp; prickly-pears, some in their thorny capsule, others already shelled; bags of garbanzos (chickpeas); monstrous onions; grapes the colour of yellow amber, finer than clusters brought from the promised land; garlic garlands; peppers and other spicy foodstuffs, were piled high and made a picturesque showing. In the alleys left between the merchants’ stalls, countrymen drove their donkeys to and fro, the women dragging their children along. I noticed one girl of rare beauty, with jet-black eyes in a bistre-coloured face, the smooth hair at her temples gleaming like twin shells of black satin, or a pair of raven’s wings. She walked along with a sober, yet radiant air, her legs free of stockings, her bare feet charming in satin shoes. This coquetry as regards footwear is widespread in Andalusia.

The courtyard of our inn, employed as a patio, was decorated with a fountain surrounded by shrubs where a tribe of chameleons lived. It is difficult to imagine a more bizarrely hideous animal. Imagine a species of pot-bellied lizard, six to seven inches long more or less, with disproportionately shaped jaws, from which it darts a viscous, whitish tongue, as long as its body; with the eyes of a toad that’s been trodden on, protruding, enormous, enveloped in a membrane, and with complete independence of movement; one eye looks at the sky and the other at the ground. These dubious lizards, that live only on air, according to the Spaniards, but which I have, in truth, seen eating flies, have the property of changing colour, depending on the place in which they happen to be. They do not become scarlet, blue or green instantly, or vary from one moment to the next, but rather, they blend with, and adopt, the colour of the objects closest to them after an hour or two. On a tree, they will turn a beautiful green; on blue cloth, a slate-grey; on a scarlet surface, a reddish-brown. Placed in the shade, they discolour, taking on a sort of neutral, yellowish-white hue. One or two chameleons would look fine in the laboratory of an alchemist, or of Doctor Faust. In Andalusia, a cord of a certain length is hung from the ceiling, the end of which is placed between the creature’s front legs. It then begins to climb, and does so until it reaches the ceiling above, to which its claws cannot grip. It then descends to the foot of the dangling rope, and rotating one of its eyes measures the distance which separates it from the floor; then, after a little reflection, it resumes its ascent with admirable seriousness and gravity, and so on, indefinitely. When two chameleons are placed on the same rope, the spectacle becomes one of transcendental comedy. One could split one sides laughing, contemplating the contortions, the frightful looks of the two ugly guests, when they meet. Wishing to transport these entertainers to France, I bought a couple of the amiable creatures, which I took with me, in a small cage; but they caught a chill during the crossing, and died on our arrival at Port-Vendres. They had grown thin, and their meagre anatomy showed through their flabby and wrinkled skin.

A few days later, the announcement of a bullfight, the last, sadly, that I was able to see, induced me to revisit Jerez. The arena at Jerez is very large and beautiful, and possesses a certain architectural character. It is built of bricks, with a higher level in stone, a combination which produces a good effect. There was an immense teeming crowd, varied and colourful, and a great fluttering of fans and handkerchiefs. I have already described several such events, and will only report a few details from this one. In the midst of the arena a pole was planted, terminating in a sort of small platform. On this platform, a macaque crouched, making grimaces and flaunting its lips. It was dressed like a troubadour, and held by a fairly long chain which allowed it to describe a large circle on the ground with the pole as its centre. When the bull entered, the first object that caught his eye was the monkey on its perch. Then a most entertaining comedy was played out: the bull chased the monkey, who quickly returned to his platform. The furious bull banged his horns fiercely against the post, and delivered terrible shocks to the macaque, who was prey to the deepest terror, and whose frozen trances alternated with irresistibly comic grimaces. Sometimes, not being able to hold on firmly enough to the edge of the platform, though it clung on with hands and feet, the macaque fell onto the back of the bull, where it clung desperately. There was unbounded hilarity, and fifteen thousand sets of white teeth illuminated all those tanned smiling faces. But comedy was followed by tragedy. A poor little dark-skinned African lad, a local boy, who was carrying a basket full of pulverised earth to throw on the pools of blood, was attacked by the bull, which he believed to be occupied elsewhere, and was tossed into the air twice. He remained lying on the sand, motionless and lifeless. The chulos came and waved their capes in the bull’s face, and lured him to another corner of the square, so that the lad’s body could be taken away. They passed very close to me; two mozos held him by his feet and head. The strange thing is that he went from black to deep blue, which it seems is the colour of a black skin on turning pale. This event did not interrupt the bullfight in any way: ‘Nada, es un moro; it’s nothing, he was a Moor’, such was the funeral oration for the wretched African. But, if the crowd was indifferent to his death, the same was not true of the monkey, which twisted its arms about, uttered dreadful cries, and struggled with all its strength to break the chain. Did it view the African as an allied being, a more successful brother, the only friend capable of understanding its plight? Indeed, I have never seen anguish more acute, more touching, than that of this monkey crying for the African lad, and the fact is all the more remarkable, since it had seen picadors felled and in danger of dying, without showing the slightest sign of concern or empathy. At the same moment an enormous owl landed in the middle of the arena: it no doubt came, in its capacity as a bird of the night, to seek out the African’s soul, and bear it off to the ebony paradise of his people. Of the eight bulls in this race, only four were to be killed. The others, after having received half a dozen lance-blows and three or four pairs of banderillas, were brought back to the toril by large oxen with bells around their necks. The last, a novillo, was abandoned to the amateurs, who invaded the arena in tumult, and dispatched it with knives; such is the passion of the Andalusians for the bullfight, that it is not enough for them to be spectators, they must also take part, otherwise they would leave dissatisfied.

The steamboat Ocean was about to leave harbour where bad weather, the intense bad weather that I have already spoken of, had detained it for several days; we boarded with a feeling of personal relief, since, due to events in Valencia and the disturbances which had followed, Cádiz found itself somewhat under siege. The newspapers seemed to be filled with poems or serialised tales translated from the French, and on the corners of all the walls were stuck small, somewhat forbidding bandos (notices), prohibiting gatherings of more than three, under penalty of death. Apart from these reasons for desiring a speedy departure, we had been travelling with our backs turned to France for a long time; this was the first time in many months that we had directed our passage towards the motherland; and, however free one may be from national prejudice, it is difficult to defend oneself from a modicum of chauvinism when one is far from one’s own country. In Spain, the slightest allusion to France excited me, and I was ready to sing of glory, victory, laurels, and warriors, like an extra at the Cirque-Olympique.

Everyone was on deck, running to and fro, waving goodbye to the boats returning to shore; I, who left behind on shore no one to regret or remember, rummaged around in the nooks and crannies of the little floating universe which was to serve as my prison for a few days. In the course of my investigations, I came upon a small room filled with a large quantity of earthenware urns of an intimate and dubious shape. These little Etruscan vases surprised me by their number, and I said to myself: ‘Here’s a most unpoetic load! O Jacques Delille, humble abbot, king of periphrasis, by what circumlocution would you have designated in your majestic alexandrines this domestic, nocturnal pottery? We had barely gone a league when I understood what these receptacles were for. From all sides people shouted: ‘Me mareo! My heart fails me! Lemons! Rum! Vinegar! Smelling-salts!’ The bridge presented a most lamentable spectacle; the women, so charming a moment ago, were turning green like eight-day-old corpses of the drowned. They lay about on mattresses, trunks, and blankets, completely neglecting all grace and modesty. A young mother who was breast-feeding her child, and was seized with seasickness, had neglected to close her blouse and only noticed it when we had passed Tarifa. A poor parrot, also affected in his cage, and understanding nothing of the anxieties he was experiencing, delivered his repertoire with the most comical tearful volubility in the world. I was fortunate in not suffering any sickness. The two days spent on the Voltigeur had undoubtedly acclimatised me. My comrade, less happy than myself, plunged down into the interior of the vessel, and failed to reappear till we arrived in Gibraltar. Why has modern medical science, which deals with migraines in rabbits with so much solicitude, and amuses itself with dying duck-bones crimson, not yet devoted itself to seeking a remedy for this horrible malaise, which causes more distress than an intense pain?

The sea was still a little rough, although the weather was magnificent; the air was so transparent that we could clearly see the coast of Africa, Cape Spartel, and the bay where Tangier is located, which we regretted not being able to visit. This strip of mountains, akin to clouds, from which they differ only by their immobility, was therefore Africa, the land of prodigies of which the Romans said: ‘Semper aliquid novi Africam adferre’ (‘There is always something new out of Africa’: Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, Book 8 xvii.42, quoting a Greek saying), the oldest continent, the cradle of oriental civilization, the home of Islam, and that black-skinned world where shadow, absent from the sky, is found only in the complexions of its people, the mysterious laboratory where nature, on its way to producing homo sapiens (the term first used by Linnaeus in 1758), turned the ape into the human. To view her, and yet pass by; a new refinement, indeed, of Tantalus’ torment!

Near Tarifa, a town whose chalk-white walls are sited on a low hill, behind a small island of the same name, Europe and Africa near each other, and seemingly desire to grant each other a kiss of alliance. The strait is so narrow that one can see both continents at the same time. It is impossible not to believe, when one is on the spot, that the Mediterranean, at a time which cannot be very remote, was an isolated sea, an inland lake, like the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, and the Dead Sea. The spectacle that presented itself to our eyes was of wondrous magnificence. To the left Europe, to the right Africa, their rocky coasts, clothed by distance in shades of pale-lilac, and the hues of a pigeon’s throat, like the colours of a double-weave silk fabric; ahead, the boundless and ever-widening horizon; above a turquoise sky; below, a sapphire sea of ​​such clarity that we could see the entire hull of our vessel, as well as the keels of the boats which passed near to us, and which seemed rather to fly through the air than float on water. We were sailing amidst an intense light, and the only dark tint to be discovered for twenty leagues around came from the long plume of thick smoke that we left behind us. The steamboat is really a northern invention; its boiler always alight and raising steam, its funnels, which will eventually blacken the whole sky, pouring forth clouds of soot which harmonise admirably with the fogs and mists of the North. Amidst the splendours of the South, it cannot but seem out of place. Nature was cheerful; large snow-white seabirds skimmed the edges of their wings along the waves. Tuna, sea-bream, fish of all kinds, gleaming, varnished, sparkling, leapt, somersaulted, and frolicked among the breakers; sails succeeded one another, from moment to moment, white and swollen, like the breasts, full of milk, of some Nereid seen above the wave. The coasts were dyed in fantastic colours; their folds, their clefts, their escarpments, caught the sun’s rays in such a way as to produce the most marvellous, and unexpected effects, and offered us a constantly renewed panorama. Around four o’clock, we were in sight of Gibraltar, waiting for the quarantine officers, as they are termed, to visit, inspect our papers with tweezers, and check that we were not, by some chance, bearing in our pockets the germs of yellow-fever, blue- cholera, or black-plague.

Gibraltar’s appearance disorientates the imagination utterly; we no longer know where we were or what we were viewing. Imagine an immense rock, or rather mountain, fourteen hundred feet high, which suddenly, abruptly, rises from the middle of the sea, on an isle so low and flat that it can barely be seen. Nothing prepares one for it, nothing explains it, it is unconnected to any upland chain; it is a monstrous monolith precipitated from the sky, a piece of some ruined planet which has fallen during a battle among the stars, a fragment of a broken world. Who placed it there? Only the deity, and eternity know. What further adds to the effect of this inexplicable rock is its shape: it looks like a vast, enormous, disproportionate, granite sphinx, such as might be have been carved by Titans who were also sculptors, and beside which the monstrous mortuary temples of Karnak, and the pyramids of Giza, possess the proportions of a mouse compared to an elephant. The elongation of its legs forms what is called the tip of Europe; the head, somewhat truncated, is turned towards Africa, which it seems to look at with a deep, dreamy attentiveness. What thoughts can this mountain contain, given its slyly meditative attitude? What riddle is it proposing or endeavouring to unravel? Its shoulders, loins and rump extend towards Spain in large nonchalant folds, in beautiful undulating lines, like those of a lion at rest. The city lies at the foot, almost imperceptible, a wretched detail dwarfed by its mass. The triple-deckers at anchor in the bay look like those toys from Germany, those small miniaturised models of ships, such as are sold at seaports; the yachts, like flies drowning in milk; even the fortifications are barely visible. However, the mountain has been excavated, mined, tunnelled, everywhere; it has a belly full of cannons, howitzers and mortars; it is full of munitions designed for war. Here is the luxury and coquetry of the impregnable. But all these armaments offer only a few almost imperceptible contours to the eye, merging with the wrinkles in the rock, only a few holes through which the bronze mouths of the artillery pieces stealthily pass. In the Middle Ages, Gibraltar would have bristled with dungeons, towers, turrets, crenellated ramparts; instead of remaining at its foot, the fortress would have climbed the mountain, and rested like an eagle’s nest on the highest ridge. The current batteries are level with the strait, which is narrow at this point, making free passage well-nigh impossible. Gibraltar, rightly known as the ‘entrance gate’ to the Mediterranean, was called by the Arabs Jabal Tariq (named for the eighteenth-century Moorish leader) from which its present name derives Its ancient name was Calpe. Abyla, in Africa, known to us as Le Mont des Singes, is on the opposite coast, close to the town of Ceuta, currently a Spanish possession, being the Brest and Toulon of the Peninsula and where the most hardened galley-slaves are sent. We could clearly see the lines of Abyla’s escarpments, and its summit, shrouded in clouds despite the serenity of the rest of the sky.

Like Cádiz, Gibraltar, located on a peninsula at the entrance to a gulf, is only linked to the continent by a narrow strip of land termed ‘neutral ground’, on which customs barriers are established. On the mainland, San Roque is the final Spanish possession of note. Algeciras, whose whitewashed houses gleam against the universal azure like the silver belly of a fish above water, is precisely opposite Gibraltar, on the far side of the bay; in the midst of this splendid blue, Algeciras was conducting its own petty revolution; We could vaguely hear gunshots. crackling like grains of salt being thrown into the fire. The ayuntamiento even took refuge on our steamboat, where he began smoking a cigar as calmly as possible.

As our quarantine officers found no infection, we were surrounded by boats, and a quarter of an hour later were on land. The effect produced by the physiognomy of the city is most strange. In taking a step, you travel five hundred leagues; somewhat more than Tom Thumb and his famous boots. Earlier, one was in Andalusia; now one is in England. From the Moorish towns of the kingdom of Granada and Murcia, you suddenly arrive in Ramsgate; here are the brick houses with their gutters, their double doors, their sash windows, exactly as in Twickenham or Richmond. Go a little further, and you will find cottages with painted gates and fences. The walks and gardens are planted with ash-trees, birch, elms, and the green vegetation of the North, so different from those silhouettes of varnished sheet-metal that are passed off as foliage in southern countries. The English have so pronounced and individual a style that they present themselves in the same manner everywhere, and I really know not why they travel, since they transport all their habits with them, and carry their interiors on their backs, like snails. Wherever an Englishman finds himself, he lives exactly as if he were in London; he needs his tea, his rump-steaks, his rhubarb-tarts, his beer and his sherry if he is well, and his calomel purgative if he is unwell. By means of the innumerable boxes that he drags with him, the Englishman obtains everywhere the ‘home comforts’ necessary for his existence. How many things these honest islanders need to live, how much trouble they go to in order to be comfortable, and how I prefer Spanish sobriety and paucity to all these refinements and complications! For a long time, I had not seen those horrible bonnets on women’s heads, those odious cardboard domes covered with a scrap of fabric, which are called hats, in the depths of which the fair sex bury their faces. in so-called civilised countries. I cannot express the unpleasant sensation I felt at the sight of the first Englishwoman I met, a hat with a green veil on her head, walking like a grenadier, her large feet clad in large boots. It was not that she herself was ugly, on the contrary, but I was accustomed to the purity of breeding, the delicate lines of the Arabian steed, to an exquisite grace in the gait, an Andalusian charm and amiability, and this rectilinear figure, with her tin-plate countenance, half-dead physiognomy, and angular gestures, her precise and methodical outfit, her sanctimonious air, and lack of naturalness, produced a laughably sinister effect on me. It seemed to me that I was suddenly in the presence of the spectre of civilisation, my mortal enemy, and that this apparition meant that my dream of wandering freely was over, and that I was obliged to depart, never to return, for nineteenth-century life. Before this Englishwoman, I felt ashamed at my not wearing white gloves, spectacles, or patent leather shoes, and cast a confused look on the extravagant embroidery of my sky-blue peacoat. For the first time in six months, I understood that I was far from properly dressed, and appeared not the gentleman.

Those long British faces, those red-coated soldiers looking like automatons, facing the sparkling sky and the brilliant sea, are not in their rightful place; one comprehends that their presence is due to a surprise-attack, to a usurpation. They occupy, but they do not inhabit their city.

The Jews, rejected or frowned upon by the Spaniards who if they are no longer religious are still superstitiously prejudiced, abound in Gibraltar, which has become a place of heresy to the Spaniards since the English ‘unbelievers’ are there. The Jewish men, with Semitic profiles, traverse the streets, their gleaming sunburnt pates topped by the customary cap set towards the back of the head, dressed in worn robes narrow in width, and dark in colour: the women, often beautiful to the eye, and whose costume is more attractive than the men, wear black cloaks, the hoods bordered with scarlet, of a picturesque character. Encountering them made me think vaguely of the Bible, of Rachel at the well, of primitive scenes of patriarchal times, for, like all oriental peoples, they preserve in their elongated black eyes, and golden complexions, the mysterious echoes of a vanished world. There are also many Moroccans and Arabs from Tangier and the North-African coast in Gibraltar, where they run little shops selling perfumes, silken belts, slippers, fly-swatters, decorated leather cushions, and other small Barbaresque products. As we wished to shop for trinkets and curiosities, we were taken to visit one of the owners, who lived in the upper town, through stepped streets less English in form than those of the lower town, and allowing, at certain bends, views of the Gulf of Algeciras, magnificently lit by the last light of day. Entering the Moroccan’s house, we were enveloped in a cloud of oriental aromas: the sweet and penetrating perfume of rose-water met our nostrils, making us think of the mysteries of the harem, and the wonders of the Thousand and One Nights. The merchant’s sons, handsome young men of around twenty, were sitting on benches near the door, breathing the evening freshness. They were gifted with that purity of features, limpidity of gaze, and nonchalant nobility, that air of amorous and pensive melancholy, which are the attributes of pure lineages. The father had the full and majestic countenance of a Magian king. We considered ourselves ugly and petty next to this solemn fellow; and in the humblest of tones, hat in hand, asked him if he would deign to sell us a few pairs of yellow Moroccan slippers. He made a sign of acquiescence, and when we pointed out to him that the price was a little high, he replied in a grandiose manner in Spanish: ‘I never overcharge: that is a Christian custom.’ It is thus that our commercial mistrust renders us objects of contempt to uncivilised nations, who fail to comprehend that desire to earn a few more centimes which leads folk to commit perjury.

Our purchases made, we descended to Lower Gibraltar, and took a walk on a beautiful promenade planted with northern species of trees, interspersed with flowers, sentries, and cannons, where we viewed carriages and riders, absolutely as if we were in Hyde Park. All that was missing was the statue of the Duke of Wellington as Achilles. Fortunately, the English were unable to darken the sea or blacken the sky: the promenade is outside the city, looking towards the tip of Europe and towards Le Mont des Singes, the mountain of the monkeys. Gibraltar is the only place on our continent where, Barbary macaques, those friendly quadrumans live and multiply in the wild. Depending on how the wind is blowing, they move from one side of the rock to the other and thus serve as a barometer; it is forbidden to kill them under very severe penalties. As for me, I saw none, there; but the temperature of the place is hot enough for macaques and cercopithecidae, most sensitive to cold, to live without stoves and heaters. Abyla, on the African coast, if its modern name is to be credited, must enjoy a similar population.

Next day, we left this species of artillery park, and hotbed of contraband, and sailed for Málaga, which we already knew well, but which it gave us pleasure to see again, with its slender, white lighthouse, and the perpetual toing and froing within its crowded harbour. Viewed from the sea, the cathedral seems larger than the city, and the ruins of the ancient Arab fortifications, on the rocky slopes, produce a most Romantic effect. We returned to our inn of the Three Kings, where the kindly Dolores gave a cry of joy on recognising us.

We set sail again, on the morrow, weighed down by a cargo of raisins; and, as we had lost a little time, the captain resolved to ignore Almería, and push on to Cartagena.

We hugged the coast of Spain closely enough that it was never out of sight. The coast of Africa, receding with the widening Mediterranean basin, had long since vanished from the horizon. To port, we viewed a long series of bluish cliffs, with odd escarpments, perpendicular clefts, displaying here and there the white dots indicating a village, a lookout tower, or a customs officer’s hut; to starboard, lay the open sea, sometimes gleaming, shaped by the current or the wind, sometimes a dull and matt azure, sometimes crystalline and translucent, sometimes with a trembling shimmer like a dancer’s basquin, sometimes an opaque, oily grey, like mercury or molten tin: yielding an unimaginable variety of tones and aspects, the despair of painters and poets. A procession of red, white, and yellow sails, belonging to vessels of all sizes and all flags, brightened the eye, and removed whatever melancholy profound solitude engenders. A sea without a sail is the most melancholy and heartbreaking spectacle one can contemplate, on realising that there is not a single thinking being in so large a space, not a heart to understand the sublime spectacle! One barely perceptible white dot on the unplumbed, limitless blue, and the immensity is populated; there lies interest, drama.

Cartagena, which is called Cartagena de Levante to distinguish it from Cartagena in the Americas, occupies the depths of a bay, a sort of rocky funnel in which vessels are perfectly sheltered from every wind. There is nothing especially picturesque about its layout; the most distinctive features it left in our memory were two windmills silhouetted in black against a background of open sky. Barely had we set foot in the boats to go ashore when we were assailed, not by porters to remove our luggage as in Cádiz, but by dreadful scoundrels praising the charms of a crowd of Balbinas, Casildas, Hilarias, and Lolas, so loudly that nothing of it could be understood.

Cartagena’s appearance differs entirely from that of Málaga. As much as Málaga is cheerful, smiling, and lively, Cartagena is gloomy, sullen beneath its crown of bare and sterile rocks, as dry as the Egyptian hills whose flanks the pharaohs mined. The limewash has disappeared, the walls have returned to their original dark colours, the windows are defended by iron grilles with complicated bolts, and the houses, which are thus more forbidding, possess the prison-like air which distinguishes Castilian manor houses. However, without wanting to fall into the trap of the traveller who wrote in his notebook: ‘All the women of Calais are cantankerous, redheaded, and hunchbacked,’ simply because the hostess of his inn combined those three faults, we must say that we only saw, at these windows so well furnished with iron-bars, charming faces and the physiognomies of angels; perhaps that is why the iron-bars are fitted so closely. While waiting for dinner, we went to visit the maritime arsenal, an establishment designed in the most grandiose proportions, and today in a state of abandonment which is sad to see; the vast basins, the dry docks, all the inactive sites where another Armada might be built, are no longer in use. Two or three rough carcasses of vessels, like the skeletons of stranded sperm whales, rotted obscurely in one corner; thousands of crickets had taken possession of these large deserted buildings; one knew not where to place one’s feet so as not to crush them; They made so much noise with their stridulations it was difficult to hear each other speak. Despite my professed love for crickets, a love I have expressed in prose and verse, I would have to agree there were a few too many.

From Cartagena, we sailed to Alicante, of which, according to a verse from Les Orientales by Victor Hugo, I had conceived, in my thoughts, infinitely too serrated a profile:

Alicante, at least today, is unable now to display that admixture, which I acknowledge to be infinitely desirable and picturesque, given that, firstly, it has no minarets and, secondly, the tower of the only bell-tower is a very short and inconspicuous one. What characterises Alicante is the enormous rocky mount that rises from the centre of the city, which rock, magnificent in shape and colour, is topped with a fortress (Sánta Barbara) and flanked by a gatehouse suspended over the abyss in the most daring way. The town hall, or to grant it more local colour, the palace of the Constitución, is a charming and tasteful building. The Alameda, paved with stone, was shaded by two or three tree-lined avenues of trees quite fully-leafed for trees in Spain if their base is not standing in a pool of water. The houses stand tall and have a European look. I saw two women wearing sulphur-yellow hats, a threatening symptom. This is all I know of Alicante, where the steamboat only touched for the time necessary to take on freight and coal: a break which we took advantage of to have lunch on shore. As one might well imagine, we did not neglect the opportunity to undertake a conscientious study of the local wine, which I found not to be as good as I had imagined, despite its incontestable authenticity; this was perhaps due to the taste of pitch imparted to it by the bota which contained it. The next stage would take us to Valencia, Valencia del Cid, as the Spanish say.

From Alicante to Valencia, the cliffs along the coastline continued to present bizarre shapes, and unexpected aspects; a square notch in the summit of a mountain, was pointed out to us, which seemed to have been made by the hand of man. The following day, towards morning, we anchored in front of El Grao: as the port, and its suburb of Valencia, is called, the quays extending half a league into the sea. The swell was quite heavy, and we arrived at the landing stage quite wet. There we took a tartane to travel into the city. The word tartane is usually understood in a maritime sense; the Valencian tartane is a box covered with oilcloth, equipped with two wheels, its chassis lacking a single spring. This vehicle seemed to us, to yield an effeminately soft ride compared to a galera; Monsieur Alexander-François Clochez’s carriages are no kinder. We were surprised and embarrassed at feeling so comfortable. Large trees lined the road we followed, an amenity which we had long lost the habit of seeing.

Gate of Valencia

Valencia, as regards picturesqueness, corresponds but little to the idea one gains from the romances and chronicles. It is a large level city, confused and straggling in layout, and without the advantages that the disorder of their construction grants to old cities built on more uneven terrain. Valencia is located on a plain called La Huerta, in the midst of gardens and crops where perpetual irrigation maintains a freshness that is very rare in Spain. The climate is so mild that palm-trees and orange-trees grow in open ground next to Northern tree species. Valencia does a large trade in oranges, moreover; to measure them, they are passed through a ring, like cannonballs whose calibre one wishes to establish; those that fail to pass through are of the first grade. The Guadalaviar (the Rio Turia, now diverted, west of the city), crossed by five beautiful stone bridges, and bordered by a superb promenade, passes the city by, almost beneath the ramparts. The numerous bleedings of its veins for irrigation render its five bridges mere objects of luxury and ornamentation for three quarters of the year. The Puerta del Cid (an old name for the Puerta de Quart), through which one passes to go to reach the Guadalaviar promenade, is flanked by two large crenellated towers (Torres de Quart), quite fine in appearance.

The streets in Valencia are narrow, and lined with tall houses with a rather sullen aspect, on some of which one can still see a few crude and mutilated coats of arms; one can make out fragments of eroded sculpture, nail-less chimeras, nose-less women, and weapon-less knights. A lost Renaissance window, lodged in a dreadful wall of recently-constructed masonry, prompts the artist to gaze upwards from time to time while drawing from him a sigh of regret; these rare vestiges may be looked for in dark corners, in the depths of backyards, but Valencia, in truth, has a most modern appearance. The cathedral, of hybrid architecture, despite a gallery apse with full Romanesque arches, possesses nothing to attract the attention of the traveller after the wonders of Burgos, Toledo and Seville. A few finely-carved altarpieces, a painting by Sebastian del Piombo, and another by Jusepe de Ribera, called Lo Spagnoletto, done in his tender manner, whereby he tried to imitate Correggio, are all that is worth noting. Valencia’s other churches, though numerous and rich, are built and decorated in the strange manner of rocaille ornamentation of which we have already given a description several times. One can only regret, when viewing all its extravagance, that so much talent and spirit was merely wasted and lost. La Lonja de Seda (Silk Exchange), in the market square, is a delightful Gothic monument; the large hall, its ceiling resting on rows of columns whose ribs twist in spirals of extreme delicacy, is of an elegance and cheerfulness of appearance rare in Gothic architecture, which was generally better suited to expressing melancholy than happiness. It is in La Lonja that carnival festivities and masked balls take place. To complete this description of the monuments, let me say a few words regarding the old convent of La Merced, where a large number of paintings have been gathered together, some mediocre, others plain bad, with only a few rare exceptions. What charmed me most at La Merced was a courtyard surrounded by a cloister, planted with palm-trees of a truly oriental grandeur and beauty, which shot like arrows into the clear air.

The real attraction of Valencia for the traveller is its people, or rather those of the Huerta, the fertile plain that surrounds it. The Valencian countrymen have a characteristic and unique mode of dress, which cannot have varied much since the Arab incursion, and which differs little from the present dress of the Moors of Africa. This costume consists of a shirt, loose trousers of heavy canvas tied with a red belt, and a green or blue velvet vest adorned with buttons made of silver coins; the legs are enclosed in white wool cnemids or leggings bordered with a blue fringe, and leaving the knee and ankle exposed. For shoes, they wear alpargatas, sandals of woven rope, the soles of which are nearly an inch thick, and which are attached by means of ribbons like Greek buskins; their heads are usually shaved in the Oriental manner and almost always wrapped in a brightly coloured kerchief; on top of this scarf a small shallow hat with turned-up brim is placed, embellished with velvet, silk-tassels, foil, and tinsel. A piece of colourful fabric, called a capa de muestra, decorated with rosettes of yellow ribbons, which hangs over the shoulder, completes this outfit, which is full of nobility and character. In the corners of his cape, which he arranges in a thousand ways, the Valencian keeps his money, his bread, his watermelon, and his navaja (knife); it is both a shoulder-bag and a cloak for him. It should of course be understood that here we are describing the full costume, worn on festive days; on ordinary, working days, the Valencian wears little more than his shirt and underclothes: then, with his enormous black sideburns, sunburnt face, fierce gaze, and bronzed arms and legs, he truly has the look of a Bedouin, especially if he undoes his kerchief and reveals his shaved head, blue with fresh stubble. Despite Spain’s pretensions to Catholicism, I always found it difficult to believe that these men were not Muslims. It is probably to their fierce looks that the Valencians owe their reputation as an evil people (mala gente) a characteristic attributed to them by the other provinces of Spain: I was told twenty times that in the Huerta of Valencia, when you wanted to rid yourself of someone, it was not hard to find a countryman who, for five or six duros, would take care of the matter. This seemed to me pure slander; I have often met people in the countryside with dreadful visages who have always greeted me most politely. One evening, we went astray, and almost had to sleep under the stars, the city gates being closed on our return, yet nothing untoward happened to us, though it had been in darkness for some while, and Valencia and its neighbourhood were in rebellion.

By notable contrast, the women among these European Kabyles are pale, blonde, fair and rounded, like the Venetians; they have a sweet, sad smile on their lips, a tender blue light in their eyes; one could not imagine a more perfect contrast with the men. Thus, the black devils of the paradise of La Huerta have white angels for wives, whose lovely hair is held back by a large-toothed comb or traversed by long needles decorated at their ends with silver balls or beads. In the past, the Valencian women wore a delightful national costume reminiscent of that of Albanian women; unfortunately, they have abandoned it, in favour of appalling Anglo-French costumes, dresses with leg-of-mutton sleeves, and other such abominations. It should be noted that women are the first to abandon national dress; there are few in Spain, other than among the masses, who preserve the old costume. This lack of taste in relation to dress is surprising on the part of the often-coquettish sex; but astonishment ceases when we realise that it is a question of their being fashionable, and not that of appearing at their most beautiful. Such women will always find the most wretched scraps of clothing charming, if those scraps are the height of fashion.

We had been in Valencia about ten days, waiting for another steamboat to pass by, for the weather had prevented departures, and disrupted the schedules. Our curiosity was now satisfied, and we only aspired to return to Paris and see our parents once more, our friends, our beloved boulevards, and the river; I believe, God forgive, that I may even have harboured a secret desire to attend the vaudeville; in short, civilised life, forgotten for six months, imperiously demanded our presence. We longed to read a daily newspaper, sleep in our own bed, and were filled with a thousand other philistine fantasies. At last, a packet-boat from Gibraltar appeared, which picked us up, and bore us to Port-Vendres, touching at Barcelona ​​where we only stayed a few hours. Barcelona’s aspect resembles Marseille, and the Spanish style was scarcely apparent there; the buildings are large, regular, and, except for the baggy blue-velvet trousers and large red caps of the Catalans, one might think oneself in a French city. Despite its Rambla planted with trees, and its beautifully aligned streets, Barcelona has a somewhat staid, stiff air, like all cities too tightly corseted in a web of fortifications.

The cathedral is very fine, especially the interior, which is dark, mysterious, almost frightening. The organs are Gothic in style and enclosed by large panels covered in paintings: a Saracen head grimaces violently under the pendant which supports them. Charming fifteenth century chandeliers, open-worked like reliquaries, hang from the ribs of the ceiling. Leaving the church, you enter a beautiful cloister of the same period, a place of reverie and silence, whose half-ruined arcades have the greyish tones of ancient Northern architecture. Calle de la Platería (Silversmiths’ Street) dazzles the eyes, the windows of its storefronts glittering with jewellery, in particular enormous clustered earrings like bunches of grapes, heavy, massively rich, and somewhat barbaric, but producing a majestic effect; these are bought mainly by well-off countrywomen.

The next day, at ten in the morning, we entered the little sheltered bay at the end of which sits Port-Vendres. We were in France. What can I say? As I set foot on the soil of my homeland, I felt tears in my eyes, not of joy, but of regret. The vermilion towers, the silver peaks of the Sierra Nevada, the oleanders of the Generalife, the long moist velvety glances, the lips like carnations in bloom, those small feet and slender hands, all this returned so vividly to my thoughts, that it seemed to me this France, in which I sought a mother once more, was nonetheless a land of exile. The dream was over.

The End of Parts XIII-XV, and of Gautier’s Travels in Spain

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