Spain -- Description and travel; Spain -- Social life and customs
The true Segovian would hoot at you if you assigned any mortal paternity
to the aqueduct. He calls it the Devil's Bridge, and tells you this
story. The Evil One was in love with a pretty girl of the upper town,
and full of protestations of devotion. The fair Segovian listened to him
one evening, when her plump arms ached with the work of bringing water
from the ravine, and promised eyes of favor if his Infernal Majesty
would build an aqueduct to her door before morning. He worked all night,
like the Devil, and the maiden, opening her black eyes at sunrise, saw
him putting the last stone in the last arch, as the first ray of the sun
lighted on his shining tail. The Church, we think very unfairly, decided
that he had failed, and released the coquettish contractor from her
promise; and it is said the Devil has never trusted a Sego-vian out of
his sight again.
The bartizaned keep of the Moorish Alcazar is perched on the western
promontory of the city that guards the meeting of the streams Eresma and
Clamores. It has been in the changes of the warring times a palace, a
fortress, a prison (where our friend--everybody's friend--Gil Blas was
once confined), and of late years a college of artillery. In one of its
rooms Alonso the Wise studied the heavens more than was good for his
orthodoxy, and from one of its windows a lady of the court once dropped
a royal baby, of the bad blood of Trasta-mara. Henry of Trastamara will
seem more real if we connect him with fiction. He was the son of "La
Favorita," who will outlast all legitimate princesses, in the deathless
music of Donizetti.
Driving through a throng of beggars that encumbered the carriage wheels
as grasshoppers sometimes do the locomotives on a Western railway, we
came to the fine Gothic Cathedral, built by Gil de Ontanon, father and
son, in the early part of the sixteenth century. It is a delight to the
eyes; the rich harmonious color of the stone, the symmetry of
proportion, the profuse opulence and grave finish of the details. It was
built in that happy era of architecture when a builder of taste and
culture had all the past of Gothic art at his disposition, and before
the degrading influence of the Jesuits appeared in the churches of
Europe. Within the Cathedral is remarkably airy and graceful in effect.
A most judicious use has been made of the exquisite salmon-colored
marbles of the country in the great altar and the pavement.
We were met by civil ecclesiastics of the foundation and shown the
beauties and the wonders of the place. Among much that is worthless,
there is one very impressive Descent from the Cross by Juan de Juni, of
which that excellent Mr. Madoz says "it is worthy to rank with the best
masterpieces of Raphael or--Mengs;" as if one should say of a poet that
he was equal to Shakespeare or Southey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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