Then the sculptured saints seem to take form and live, the flying pipes of the twin organs to glitter like angels’ wings, the statues in the choir to murmur in strange tongues, the many famous pictures which line the walls to grow terrible in the half-light, with dark forms of archbishops and priests, monks and canons long laid to rest in the repose of painted shrines, beside which deacons keep watch with silver croziers; and from the boundless gloom a burst of sound rolls forth like the thunder of an earthquake from the deep-mouthed pipes of the two organs, replying to each other as in a voice of Titans--the rattle of conquering drums, the shrill bray of trumpets, the crying voice of pipes, and all the clash and clamour as of a battle-field. On the anniversary of St. Fernando’s death the troops still march in to hear the military mass and to lower the standard of Spain before his body, each soldier bearing a lighted torch. Once it was a company of a hundred Moors, bareheaded, who carried the torches to the royal bier, sent in token of submission by the Caliph of Granada. Could any conqueror wish for more? CHAPTER XXXV Don Pedro Oh! the beautiful south it is at Seville! Nothing can shut it out! With its glamour of all strange things in nature, story, and song; Moslem and Christian knights and lovely sultanas hung with priceless pearls, dead caliphs haunting blood-stained towers, shades of Christian conquerors and swarthy slaves, the curse of a murderous past, the glitter of a glorious present, the clash, the confusion, Arab palaces, marble-paved, heavy with far-off tales, and gates, walls, and castles of nations long died out, yet with a poetic life still speaking! The narrow streets, across which lovers still whisper to each other under the moon, the unshuttered windows, iron-bound, where Inez may creep down and warble to Alonso, concealed in a dark mantle behind the shadow of a wall, where roses fling curtains of perfumed blossom, orange petals scent the air, and southern sunsets spread sudden splendours in the afterglow, as the earth lies black under a sky palpitating like a furnace, till night falls and countless stars come forth to light a paler day! Two things are most notable at Seville; the great mosque, now the cathedral, and the Alcazar. The Alcazar, inhabited by long generations of Arab caliphs up to the time of St. Fernando, is still untouched, a Moorish fortress in the centre of the city, girt by _tapia_ walls and castellated towers. Not a poetic ruin like the Alhambra, but a real substantial castle, reached through the Plaza del Trionfo by which Fernando passed. It was again rebuilt and redecorated by Don Pedro el Cruel, 1350, King of Castile and Leon, at the same period as the Alhambra, Yussuf, Caliph of Granada, being on such friendly terms with Don Pedro that the same Moorish architect wrought for both.