porous earthen bottle common to all, was
placed; just as it is now placed in Andalucian
gentlemen's halls, or on the bench at inns.
In Spain, water is a necessity of life. In
England, we wash with it and do not drink
it: in Spain, they drink it, but do not wash
with it.

Facing these apertures, Boabdil's throne
was placed. Those living inscriptions still
speak of it, like old babbling servants in
some deserted country-house, now used as a
show place. Hear them how they cry
perpetually, "This dome is our father, and we,
the recesses, his daughters. We are members
of the same body, but the throne is the heart
from whence our soul derives energy and life.
Yusuf, my master, has decorated me (the
throne) with robes of glory, and I am as the
sun; these recesses being as signs of the
zodiac, in the heaven of this dome."

Now we go down beneath this throne-
hall, to a network of dungeon-like passages,
by which sultans often escaped in treasonable
revolts, when the angry scimitars were
glittering in the fountain-courts, or when the
Abencerrages were tossing their threatening
spears in the buzzing city below.

We go into a prison-sort of Germanised room
with whispering holes at each end; which
Philip the Second, the sullen bigot, built to
amuse the wretched child (Don Carlos) he
afterwards murdered. We go into a sort
of vaulted wine-cellar, where some rude
statuary, too bad to be pitied, has been
immured by the prudish monks; who have
always a keen eye for indecency, and find it
out as soon as any one. We enter the state-
prison where so many heart-groans have been
heaved, and look out of the window, from
whence Ayesha let down Boabdil; who
afterwards proved not worth saving.

It puzzles me always in a ruin to realise
the actual life of the old inmates. Where
did they keep their cold meat? sounds
tolling in my ears. Where did they put their
coals? Did they bruise their own oats? or
did they double up their perambulators?
are not questions more often and
pertinaciously suggested to me. There seem no
nooks nor corners; no lumber-rooms; no
billiard-rooms, no pantries, no wine-cellars.
True, there are their bath-rooms and alcoves;
their little bins or windowless sleeping-
rooms, as in Pompeian houses; their doorless
porticoes and recesses, which gold tissue
tapestries, and Mamelukes with drawn sabres
may have made private. But where are their
kitchens? where are their store-rooms? It is
true that, opposite the Hall of the Abencerrages
where they show you a damp-red stain
which is devoutly believed to be their blood,
there is the Hall of the Two Sisters, where
the Moorish kings resided. Out of this there
are square cells, for sleeping on cushions, just
as if sleep was not a regular meal, but only a
sort of lunch, to be taken in hasty snatches in
lulls of business, as Napoleon took it. And, if
you pass under the engrailed arches—like so
many lace collars copied large in gilded stucco
—you see curiously bolted Oriental doors;
and a high latticed corridor, whence ladies
of the Harem could look down at audiences
or public dinners, seeing but unseen.
When you go up, you fancy a sort of rose
perfume, as from Damascus silk, still lingers
about the place: you look round, and see it
is only Bensaken, the famous guide, lighting
his cigarette. Again, if you turn to the right
from the Hall of Ambassadors and pass down
a heavy Charles the Fifth gallery, you come
to what Ford calls "a Bathsebah mirador,"
which is what the grumbling Spaniards, who
hate Moorish antiquities, designate "the
Queen's dressing-room." Chilly Flemish
Charles blocked up the Moorish colonnade,
which was draughty in winter, and daubed
this boudoir wall with sprawling Italian
frescoes of the battle of Lepanto, which his
brave bastard won. Thousands of Smiths and
Joneses have scratched their names since on
these green frescoes, and will obtain, doubtless,
the degrading immortality they courted.
Certainly there is in the corner a marble slab
drilled with holes like a sink; through which,
foolish guides say, perfumes were smoked up
while the radiant Sultana put on her rose
silks and pearls above.

We also get a glimpse of life as we grope
about passages with broken walls, that show
the dark hollows of subterranean aqueducts.
We come to the Moorish bath-rooms, stupidly
called the dungeons of Ayesha. There is, as
at Cairo, an entrance undressing saloon, and
an inner vapour and shampooing bath, the
separate seats of the Sultan and Sultana
being duly pointed out with the peculiar
lying exactitude of guides. The vapour bath
has a blue-dome roof, punched into star-
shaped holes; just as you would pierce a
pumpkin's rind. Shirking the ponderous-
panelled blue, red, and gilt covered ceilings
of Charles the Filth's apartments which look
on the orange gardens of the Lindarajah,
I come to the old mosque, afterwards a chapel,
purged and consecrated by Ferdinand and
Isabella, the conquerors of Grenada. The
door was once plated with bronze, and, like
all the rest of the palace, stripped and spoiled
by succeeding generations of guardian thieves
who allowed no one else but themselves to
steal. You still see above the door the
exquisite laced niche where the Koran used to
be placed by the green-turbaned moollahs.
The inscriptions which were dumb to the
conquerors, still protest for the old faith, and
cry aloud from barge board and netted
rafter, "Be not one of the negligent." "There
is no conqueror but God." "God is our
refuge in every time of trouble."

I look through the mosque-grated window
into the luxuriant garden run wild with a frolic
luxury and intoxication of growth. I drag
through a stray bunch of transparent gold
grapes that sway at the bars around which