Charles V. came here, and had some liking for the town, since he rebuilt the Alcázar with its magnificent staircase, but did not live to enjoy it, and his wife, Doña Isabel, died here. To him Toledo owed the great water works of Juanelo Turriano, the wonder of the times, a machine composed of tin cases pinned together and rising in file from the river to the castle. The water entering the first case was pushed into the second by wheels, and thus up to the castle, where it fell into a reservoir. This _artificio_ is written of in Paris in 1615 in "L'Inventaire général des plus curieuses recherches des Royaumes d'Espayne": "Là tu verras le grand, fort et mémorable Alcázar, où l'eau monte en grande abondance par un artifice admirable, qui rejaillit de la rivière du Tage. A ceste invention est semblable celle que fit faire Henry le Grand d'heureu mémoire sur le Pont Neuf de cette bonne ville de Paris où il y a deux belles figures de bronze, l'une de Jésus Christ, et l'autre de la Samaritáine. Il n'y a que cette différence que l'eau de Tolède monte deux fois plus haut que l'autre, et jette aussi gros que le corps d'un boeuf." But henceforth Toledo is an effaced figure among Spanish towns. She is no longer the Imperial city or the Royal town, and is only a great historic memory. CHAPTER V _The old Spanish Capital, once and now_ The tale of Toledo's rough and broken history, ending as I have shown with the last struggle of the _Comuneros_, will have amply prepared the reader for the town's present physiognomy. Few cities in Europe that for so long were accustomed to opulence and power, have known a reverse so instantaneous, so complete, an extinction against which all effort, all hope, all aspiration have proved vain, as that which Toledo was crushed beneath, when Felipe Segundo chose miserable, ugly, undistinguished Madrid for his country's capital. Until then the vicissitudes, the fortunes of Toledo were those of all Spain. Even now in her ruin, the violent and imperious character of the race remains imperishably stamped on the harsh, sad mixture of beauty and ugliness of her conservative features. But the country itself takes no note of her. She has lived, she lives no more, except in the memory of historians, for the fugitive admiration of the traveller.