The Giralda is incomparable, a unique expression of feminine strength. She is as oriental and mysterious as the Sphinx, or might be likened to a great sultana in enchanted sleep. Though her majestic head has towered for centuries beside her Christian sister, they still seem as irreconcilable as their faiths a thousand years ago. It has been a strange companionship. The oriental loveliness and splendor of the Giralda, like that of Seville, are best felt at the twilight hour, when her jewels sparkle in the last rays of the setting sun. With the waning light the coloring becomes purple, then indigo, while the silhouette still stands out in startling clearness and strength against the spotless blue of the evening sky. You feel as if the whole mountain of masonry were slowly but surely leaning more and more from its base and about to bury you in its fall. The vermilion and ochre coloring are like the petals of the rose. Nowhere is the surface uniform, but passes gradually from light cream and buff through warmer amber to brilliant orange and carmine and crimson lake, even to the color of the pomegranate's heart. The exquisite surface of delicate tinting, mellowed by the storms and suns of centuries, is everywhere relieved by the brilliant sparkle, the delicate play of light and shade, of the Moorish designs. When the low rays of the Andalusian sun illumine the Giralda, just touched here and there with dots of molten gold like the orange trees from whose green bed it rises, you see the boldest creation of Moorish imagination in all its splendor. The great Cathedral itself becomes a modest nun with rich, but sombre, cape over her shoulders, beside this dazzling creature glowing with Saracenic fire.