I
Call Him Sacristan At A Venture; But There Were Several Kinds Of Guides
In The Cathedral, Some In The Livery Of The Place And Some In Civil
Dress, Willing To Supplement Our Hotel Interpreter, Or Lying In Wait For
Us When We Came Alone.
I wish now I had taken them all, but at the time
they tired me, and I denied them.
Though not a day passed but we saw it, I am not able to say what the
cathedral was like. The choir was planted in the heart of it, as it
might be a celestial refuge in that forest of mighty pillars, as great
in girth as the giant redwoods of California, and climbing to a Gothic
firmament horizoned round as with sunset light from near a hundred
painted windows. The chapels on each side, the most beautiful in Spain,
abound in riches of art and pious memorials, with chief among them the
Royal Chapel, in the prow, as it were, of the ship which the cathedral
has been likened to, keeping the bones not only of the sainted hero,
King Fernando, but also, among others, the bones of Peter the Cruel, and
of his unwedded love, Maria de Padilla, far too good for Peter in life,
if not quite worthy of San Fernando in death. You can see the saint's
body on certain dates four times a year, when, as your Baedeker will
tell you, "the troops of the garrison march past and lower their colors"
outside the cathedral.
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