It Is A Good Wholesome Face, Such As You Would Expect.
But the
thin, powerful profile of Ximenez is very striking, with his red hair
and florid tint, his curved beak, and long, nervous lips.
He looks not
unlike that superb portrait Raphael has left of Cardinal Medici.
This university is fragrant with the good fame of Ximenez. In the
principal court there is a fine medallion of the illustrious founder and
protector, as he delighted to be drawn, with a sword in one hand and a
crucifix in the other, - twin brother in genius and fortune of the
soldier-priest of France, the Cardinal-Duke Richelieu. On his gorgeous
sarcophagus you read the arrogant epitaph with which he revenged himself
for the littleness of kings and courtiers: -
"Praetextam junxi sacco, galeamque galero, Frater, dux, praesul,
cardineusque pater. Quin, virtute mea junctum est diadema cucullo, Dum
mihi regnanti patuit Gesperia."
By a happy chance our visit was made in a holiday time, and the students
were all away. It was better that there should be perfect solitude and
silence as we walked through the noble system of buildings and strove to
re-create the student world of Cervantes's time. The chronicle which
mentions the visit of Francis I. to Alcala, when a prisoner in Spain,
says he was received by eleven thousand students. This was only twenty
years before the birth of Cervantes. The world will never see again so
brilliant a throng of ingenuous youth as gathered together in the great
university towns in those years of vivid and impassioned greed for
letters that followed the revival of learning.
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