Ordinarily I Should Say You Could Not Go Amiss For Your Profit And
Pleasure In Seville, But There Are Certain Imperative Objects Of
Interest Like The Casa De Pilatos Which You Really Have To Do.
Strangely
enough, it is very well worth doing, for, though it is even more
factitiously Moorish than the Alcazar, it is of almost as great beauty
and of greater dignity.
Gardens, galleries, staircases, statues,
paintings, all are interesting, with a mingled air of care and neglect
which is peculiarly charming, though perhaps the keener sensibilities,
the morbider nerves may suffer from the glare and hardness of the tiling
which render the place so wonderful and so exquisite. One must complain
of something, and I complain of the tiling; I do not mind the house
being supposed like the house of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem.
It belongs to the Duke of Medina-Celi, who no more comes to it from
Madrid than the Duke of Alva comes to his house, which I somehow
perversely preferred. For one thing, the Alva palace has eleven
_patios,_ all far more forgotten than the four in the House of Pilate,
and I could fully glut my love of _patios_ without seeing half of them.
Besides, it was in the charge of a typical Spanish family: a lean,
leathery, sallow father, a fat, immovable mother, and a tall, silent
daughter. The girl showed us darkly about the dreary place, with its
fountains and orange trees and palms, its damp, Moresque, moldy walls,
its damp, moldy, beautiful wooden ceilings, and its damp, moldy
staircase leading to the family rooms overhead, which we could not see.
The family stays for a little time only in the spring and fall, but if
ever they stay so late as we had come the sunlight lying so soft and
warm in the _patio_ and the garden out of it must have made them as
sorry to leave it as we were.
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