Our Plaza Was So Full Of Romantic Suggestion That I Am Rather
Glad Now I Had No Association With It.
I am sure I could not have borne
at the time to know, as I have only now learned
By recurring to my
Baedeker, that in the old Franciscan cloister once there had stood the
equestrian statue of the Comendador who dismounts and comes unbidden to
the supper of Don Giovanni in the opera. That was a statue which, seen
in my far youth, haunted my nightmares for many a year, and I am sure it
would have kept me from sleep in the conditions, now so perfect, of our
new housing if I had known, about it.
III
The plaza is named, of course, for King Fernando, who took Seville from
the Moors six hundred years ago, and was canonized for his conquests and
his virtues. But I must not enter so rashly upon the history of Seville,
or forget the arrears of personal impression which I have to bring up.
The very drive from the station was full of impressions, from the narrow
and crooked streets, the houses of yellow, blue, and pink stucco, the
flowered and fountained _patios_ glimpsed passingly, the half-lengths of
church-towers, and the fleeting facades of convents and palaces, all
lovely in the mild afternoon light. These impressions soon became
confluent, so that without the constant witness of our note-books I
should now find it impossible to separate them. If they could be
imparted to the reader in their complexity, that would doubtless be the
ideal, though he would not believe that their confused pattern was a
true reflex of Seville; so I recur to the record, which says that the
morning after our arrival we hurried to see the great and beautiful
cathedral. It had failed, in our approach the afternoon before, to
fulfil the promise of one of our half-dozen guide-books (I forget which
one) that it would seem to gather Seville about it as a hen gathers her
chickens, but its vastness grew upon us with every moment of our more
intimate acquaintance. Our acquaintance quickly ripened into the
affectionate friendship which became a tender regret when we looked our
last upon it; and vast as it was, it was never too large for our
embrace. I doubt if there was a moment in our fortnight's devotion when
we thought the doughty canons, its brave-spoken founders, "mad to have
undertaken it," as they said they expected people to think, or any
moment when we did not revere them for imagining a temple at once so
beautiful and so big.
Our first visit was redeemed from the commonplace of our duty-round of
the side-chapels by two things which I can remember without the help of
my notes. One, and the great one, was Murillo's "Vision of St. Anthony,"
in which the painter has most surpassed himself, and which not to have
seen, Gautier says, is not to have known the painter.
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