The King Goes Back With A Face Of Sympathy To Maria, Who Has
Fallen To The Floor.
The treacherous keeping is all rather in the taste of the Italian
Renaissance, but the murder itself is more Roman, as the Spanish
atrocities and amusements are apt to be.
Murray says it was in the
beautiful Hall of the Ambassadors that Don Fadrique was killed, but the
other manuals are not so specific. Wherever it was, there is a
blood-stain in the pavement which our Granadan guide failed to show us,
possibly from a patriotic pique that there are no blood-stains in the
Alhambra with personal associations. I cannot say that much is to be
made of the vaulted tunnel where poor Maria de Padilla used to bathe,
probably not much comforted by the courtiers afterward drinking the
water from the tank; she must have thought the compliment rather nasty,
and no doubt it was paid her to please Don Pedro.
We found it pleasanter going and coming through the corridor leading to
the gardens from the public court. This was kept at the outer end by an
"old rancid Christian" smoking incessant cigarettes and not explicitly
refusing to sell us picture postals after taking our entrance fee; the
other end was held by a young, blond, sickly-looking girl, who made us
take small nosegays at our own price and whom it became a game to see if
we could escape. I have left saying to the last that the king and queen
of Spain have a residence in the Alcazar, and that when they come in the
early spring they do not mind corning to it through that plebeian
quadrangle.
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