Old Court Life in Spain, vol. 2/2

The time is early summer; the sky an unbroken sphere of blue, as deep and smooth as a turquoise, canopying the blanched domes and pinnacles of the cathedral and illuminating wit...

In the upper story of the Alcazar is Don Pedro’s retiring room, overlooking the central Patio de las Doncellas below, the soft echo of ever-bubbling fountains and runnels mingli...

The Princess Blanche de Bourbon, sister to the Queen of France, wife of Charles V., lived in the old fortress of Narbonne, beside the sea, in those romantic days when ladies’ ro...

While Blanche sat all alone, the arras gently lifted and Don Fadique stood before her. Not gay and triumphant as she had seen him at Narbonne, but pale and grave and habited in...

Although so far in the north, Valladolid was at this time considered the official capital of Castile, and therefore it was there that Blanche had come to meet her much dreaded b...

All sleep, save that within a most lovely cloister of Gothic arches, over which the clustering branches of many vines tremble in the night air, comes the sound of voices, now ne...

The inner _patio_, on the left hand, as you enter the Alcazar, where trees of magnolia and pomegranate wave together among hedges of red roses, has always been called the _Patio...

There, among goatherds and shepherds, for awhile he lay concealed, and when reflection came to him in this solitude, his conscience sorely pricked him for his disloyalty to the...

The weather is dark and stormy. Even in the sunny South such changes occur, especially towards the equinox, to which the time approaches. As far as the eye can reach black cloud...

Around range the medallions of the ancient Gothic kings, over four golden-barred balconies breaking the richness of the wall, dividing triply-grouped arches, light as dreams, re...

Again we are at Toledo, on the banks of the dark Tagus, a river full and strong, flowing for three hundred and seventy-three miles from the lonely mountains of Biscay to the por...

The scene changes to the Arab court of the Alcazar, where, under lines of granite columns, knights and courtiers, heralds and pages, pass in and out. Nothing speaks of a city en...

The bright morning which broke so auspiciously at the Alcazar has darkened. The deep shadows of gathering clouds press up from the horizon and veil the city in a soft mist. The...

Hours pass, struck out from the Giralda tower in many-toned bells, each bell with its own name and recognised by its tone. Figures had glided in and out, dwarfed to pigmies by t...

Within an incredibly short time Don Pedro marched from Seville with a well-disciplined army and gained possession of Toledo, principally by the connivance of the Jews, Father Is...

Foremost in the fighting at Toledo, when Don Pedro drove out Don Enrique de Trastamare and took Queen Blanche prisoner, was his favourite, Don Juan de Mañara, an historical prof...

The time has now come that Don Pedro knows not where to turn. All Spain is divided by civil war. Seville, his own Seville, is full of conspirators, awaiting the arrival of Don E...

The Black Prince--so named from the dark colour of his armour, and only fifteen years old when he was made a knight on the victorious field of Crécy by his father Edward III., a...

We are in a romantic age of youth and _fanfaronnade_. Our _dramatis personæ_ are overflowing with the sap of life. Of the three Plantagenets, the Black Prince is in the prime of...

Valladolid (Belad-Waled of the Moors) remains much the same dull, ugly town, without a charm; to be greatly favoured by-and-by by Philip the Second, when his time comes to reign...

Juan, son of Enrique de Trastamare (1390), died young by a fall from his horse. His son, El Enfermo, who ended his life at twenty-eight, inaugurated the romantic episode of _the...

The court is at Segovia, that ancient city perched among the romantic passes of the Guadarramas, north of Madrid, said to have been founded by Hercules. The famous Roman bridge,...

We are again in the great room in the palace of Valladolid, with its low roof and deep embowered casement, looking on the richly carved front of San Pablo, in which Don Fadique...

The whole round of royal actors in the dramatic epoch move before us as living characters on the stage of life. Their daughter Juana, _la Folle_, her handsome husband Philippe l...

Nature, too, was on their side. Save towards the sea, at the eastern extremity of Spain, the whole kingdom of Granada is fenced in by almost inaccessible mountains, rugged and b...

At the end of the Alameda, outside Granada, there is a bridge over the Xenil, opening from a broad and lofty avenue of elms. How gay it is! The murmur of the green-tinged river!...

The country between Salamanca and Valladolid is very flat, the finest corn-growing region in all Spain. Now a railway passes through it, and when the summer sun blazes on the th...