Some Of These Are Still Handsome Residences, But Most Have Fallen Into Neglect And Abandonment. You May Find A Beggar Installed In The Ruined Palace Of A Moorish Prince, A Cobbler At Work In The Pleasure-House Of A Castilian Conqueror.

The graceful carvings are mutilated and destroyed, the delicate arabesques are smothered and hidden under a triple coat of whitewash.

The most beautiful Moorish house in the city, the so-called Taller del Moro, where the grim governor of Huesca invited four hundred influential gentlemen of the province to a political dinner, and cut off all their heads as they entered (if we may believe the chronicle, which we do not), is now empty and rapidly going to ruin. The exquisite panelling of the walls, the endlessly varied stucco work that seems to have been wrought by the deft fingers of ingenious fairies, is shockingly broken and marred. Gigantic cacti look into the windows from the outer court. A gay pomegranate-tree flings its scarlet blossoms in on the ruined floor. Rude little birds have built their nests in the beautiful fretted rafters, and flutter in and out as busy as brokers. But of all the feasting and loving and plotting these lovely walls beheld in that strange age that seems like fable now, - the vivid, intelligent, scientific, tolerant age of the Moors, - even the memory has perished utterly and forever.

We strolled away aimlessly from this beautiful desolation, and soon came out upon the bright and airy Paseo del Transito.

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