Prove of utility in the further
regulation of our movements; Aranjuez being but a slight distance
from the frontier of La Mancha and the high road into that province
passing directly through it. We accordingly sallied forth from
Madrid, selling from twenty to forty Testaments in every village
which lay in our way, until we arrived at Aranjuez, to which place
we had forwarded a large supply of books.
A lovely spot is Aranjuez, though in desolation: here the Tagus
flows through a delicious valley, perhaps the most fertile in
Spain; and here upsprang, in Spain's better days, a little city,
with a small but beautiful palace shaded by enormous trees, where
royalty delighted to forget its cares. Here Ferdinand the Seventh
spent his latter days, surrounded by lovely senoras and Andalusian
bull-fighters: but as the German Schiller has it in one of his
tragedies:
"The happy days in fair Aranjuez,
Are past and gone."
When the sensual king went to his dread account, royalty deserted
it, and it soon fell into decay. Intriguing counters no longer
crowd its halls; its spacious circus, where Manchegan bulls once
roared in rage and agony, is now closed, and the light tinkling of
guitars is no longer heard amidst its groves and gardens.
