Spain . opped. Do me a favor? A hundred. ^ Only one : shut your eyes and dont open themuntil I tell you. Well, they are shut. See that you keep them so; I shant like it ifyou open them. Never fear. Gongora took me by the hand and led me forward:I trembled like a leaf. We took about fifteen steps and stopped. Look! said Gongora in an agitated voice. I looked, and I swear by the head of my reader Ifelt two tears trickling down ray cheeks. We were in the Court of the Lions. If at that moment I had been obliged to go out asI had come in, I could not have told what I had forest of columns, a
Spain . opped. Do me a favor? A hundred. ^ Only one : shut your eyes and dont open themuntil I tell you. Well, they are shut. See that you keep them so; I shant like it ifyou open them. Never fear. Gongora took me by the hand and led me forward:I trembled like a leaf. We took about fifteen steps and stopped. Look! said Gongora in an agitated voice. I looked, and I swear by the head of my reader Ifelt two tears trickling down ray cheeks. We were in the Court of the Lions. If at that moment I had been obliged to go out asI had come in, I could not have told what I had forest of columns, a vision of arches and tracery,an indefinable elegance, an unimaginable delicacy,prodigious wealth 5 an irrepressible sense of air-iness, transparency, and wavy motion like a greatpavilion of lace; an appearance as of an edificewhich must dissolve at a breath; a variety of lightsand mysterious shadows; a confusion, a capriciousdisorder, of little things; the grandeur of a castle, Court of Lions, cAlhambra. GRANADA. 203 the gayety of a summer-house ; an harmonious grace,an extravagance, a delight; the fancy of an enam-ored girl, the dream of an angel; a madness, anameless something,—such is the first efiect of theCourt of the Lions. The court is not larger than a great ball-room; itis rectangular in form, with walls no higher than atwo-storied Andalusian cottage. A light porticoruns all around, supported by very slender whitemarble columns grouped in symmetrical disorder, twoby two and three by three, almost without pedestals, sothat they are like the trunks of trees standing on theground: they have varied capitals, high and grace-ful, in the form of little pilasters, above which bendlittle arches of very graceful form, which do notseem to rest upon the columns, but rather to besuspended over them like curtains upholding thecolumns themselves and resembling ribbons andtwining garlands. From the middle of the twoshortest sides advance two groups of columns form-ing two little sq
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1895
