If the position of the choir is unfortunate, its details are among the most remarkable and glorious of their time and country. The only entrance is through the great iron parclose or reja at the east. This, as well as the corresponding grille work directly opposite, closing off the bay in front of the high altar, are wonderful specimens of the iron-worker's craft, splendid masterpieces of an art which has never been excelled since the days of its mediæval guilds. The master Domingo de Cespedes erected the grille in the year 1548. The framework seems to be connected by means of tenons and mortices, while the scrolls are welded together. The larger moldings are formed of sheet iron, bent to the shape required and flush-riveted to their light frames. Neither the general design nor the details (both Renaissance in feeling) are especially meritorious, but the thorough mastery of the material is most astonishing. The stubborn iron has been wrought and formed with as much ease and boldness as if it had been soft limestone or plaster. It is characteristic of the age that the craftsman has not limited himself to one material. Certain portions of the smaller ornaments are of silver and copper. Originally their shining surfaces, as well as the gilding of the great portion of the principal iron bars, must have touched the whole with life and color. It was all covered with black paint in the time of the Napoleonic wars to escape the greedy hands of La Houssaye's victorious mob, and the gates still retain the sable coat that protected them. Even a more glorious example of Spanish craftsmanship is found in the choir stalls which surround us to the north and south and west as soon as we enter. Here we are face to face with the finest flowering of Spanish mediæval art. Théophile Gautier, generalizing upon the whole composition, says: "L'art gothique, sur les confins de la Renaissance, n'a rien produit de plus parfait ni de mieux dessiné." The whole treatment of the work is essentially Spanish. The stalls, the "silleria," are arranged in two tiers, the upper reached by little flights of five steps and covered by a richly carved, marble canopy, supported by slender Corinthian columns of red jasper and alabaster. All the stalls are of walnut, fifty in the lower row, seventy in the upper, exclusive of the archbishop's seat. The right side of the altar, that is, the right side of the celebrant looking from the altar, is called the side of the Gospel,--the left, the side of the Epistle. The great carvings, differing in the upper and lower stalls in period and execution, are the work of three artists. The carvings of the lower row were executed by Rodriguez in 1495, those of the upper, on the Gospel side, by Alonso Berruguete, and those on the side of the Epistle, by Philip Vigarny (also called Borgoña), both of the latter about fifty years later (in 1543).