"The first feeling is that of sadness; the whole building is of dirt-colored stone, and striped with white between the stones; the roofs are covered with strips of lead. It looks like an edifice built of earth. The walls are very high and bare, and contain a great number of loopholes. One would call it a prison rather than a convent.... The locality, the forms, the colors, everything, in fact, seems to have been chosen by him who founded the edifice with the intention of offering to the eyes of men a sad and solemn spectacle. Before entering you have lost all your gayety; you no longer smile, but think. You stop at the doors of the Escurial with a sort of trepidation, as at the gates of a deserted city; it seems to you that, if the terrors of the Inquisition reigned in some corner of the world, they ought to reign among those walls. You would say that therein one might still see the last traces of it and hear its last echo.... The royal palace is superb, and it is better to see it before entering the convent and church, in order not to confuse the separate impressions produced by each. This palace occupies the northeast corner of the edifice. Several rooms are full of pictures, others are covered from floor to ceiling with tapestries, representing bull-fights, public balls, games, fêtes, and Spanish costumes, designed by Goya; others are regally furnished and adorned; the floor, the doors, and the windows are covered with marvellous inlaid work and stupendous gilding. But among all the rooms the most noteworthy is that of Philip II.; it is rather a cell than a room, is bare and squalid, with an alcove which answers to the royal oratory of the church, so that, from the bed, by keeping the doors open, one can see the priest who is saying mass. Philip II. slept in that cell, had his last illness there, and there he died. One still sees some chairs used by him, two little stools upon which he rested the leg tormented with gout, and a writing-desk. The walls are white, the ceiling flat and without any ornament, and the floor of brick.... In the court-yard of the kings you can form a first idea of the immense frame-work of the edifice. The court is inclosed by walls; on the side opposite the doors is the façade of the church. On a spacious flight of steps there are six enormous Doric columns, each of which upholds a large pedestal, and every pedestal a statue. There are six colossal statues, by Battiste Monegro, representing Jehoshaphat, Ezekiel, David, Solomon, Joshua, and Manasseh. The court-yard is paved, scattered with bunches of damp turf. The walls look like rocks cut in points; everything is rigid, massive, and heavy, and presents the fantastic appearance of a Titanic edifice, hewn out of solid stone, and ready to defy the shocks of earth and the lightnings of heaven. There one begins to understand what the Escurial really is.