Here the king may live with such approach to nature
as his false and deformed education will allow. He is surrounded by
nothing but the world of servants and courtiers, and it requires little
effort of the imagination to consider himself chief and lord.
It was this spirit which in the decaying ripeness of the Bourbon dynasty
drove the Louis from Paris to Versailles and from Versailles to Marly.
Millions were wasted to build the vast monument of royal fatuity, and
when it was done the Grand Monarque found it necessary to fly from time
to time to the sham solitude and mock retirement he had built an hour
away.
When Philip V. came down from France to his splendid exile on the throne
of Spain, he soon wearied of the interminable ceremonies of the
Cas-tilian court, and finding one day, while hunting, a pleasant farm on
the territory of the Segovian monks, flourishing in a wrinkle of the
Guadarrama Mountains, he bought it, and reared the Palace of La Granja.
It is only kings who can build their castles in the air of palpable
stones and mortar. This lordly pleasure-house stands four thousand feet
above the sea level. On this commanding height, in this savage Alpine
loneliness, in the midst of a scenery once wildly beautiful, but now
shorn and shaven into a smug likeness of a French garden, Philip passed
all the later years of his gloomy and inglorious life.
It has been ever since a most tempting summer-house to all the Bourbons.
When the sun is calcining the plains of Castile, and the streets of
Madrid are white with the hot light of midsummer, this palace in the
clouds is as cool and shadowy as spring twilights. And besides, as all
public business is transacted in Madrid, and La Granja is a day's
journey away, it is too much trouble to send a courier every day for the
royal signature, - or, rather, rubric, for royalty in Spain is above
handwriting, and gives its majestic approval with a flourish of the
pen, - so that everything waits a week or so, and much business goes
finally undone; and this is the highest triumph of Spanish industry and
skill.
We had some formal business with the court of the regent, and were not
sorry to learn that his highness would not return to the capital for
some weeks, and that consequently, following the precedent of a certain
prophet, we must go to the mountain.
We found at the Estacion del Norte the state railway carriage of her
late majesty, - a brilliant creation of yellow satin and profuse gilding,
a bovidoir on wheels, - not too full of a distinguished company. Some of
the leading men of New Spain, one or two ministers, were there, and we
passed a pleasant two hours on the road in that most seductive of all
human occupations, - talking politics.
