There are said to be one thousand one hundred and ten windows in the exterior of the Escurial alone, a fact which greatly astonishes the cockney visitor. I did not count them, as I preferred believing the report to entering upon an undertaking of such magnitude; but the fact is not improbable, for I never saw so many windows in one place; the number of the doors is equally fabulous. I took leave of this desert of granite, this monastic necropolis, with an extraordinary feeling of satisfaction and delight; it seemed as if I were restored to life, and that I could once more feel young, and enjoy the wonderful creation of God, which I had lost all hope of doing, while under these funereal vaults. The warm bright air enveloped me as with some soft cloth of fine wool, and warmed my body, that was frozen by the cadaverous atmosphere; I was freed from the architectural nightmare, which I thought would never end. I would advise those people who are absurd enough to pretend that they are suffering from _ennui_ to go and pass three or four days in the Escurial; they will there learn what _ennui_ really means, and, for the rest of their lives, will always find a fund of amusement in the thought that they might be in the Escurial, and that they are not. When we returned to Madrid, all our acquaintances were astonished and delighted at beholding us once more alive. Very few persons return from the Escurial; they either die of consumption in two or three days, or blow out their brains,--that is, if they are Englishmen. Luckily, we both enjoy a very good constitution; and as Napoleon said of the cannon-ball which was to carry him off, the building that is to kill us is not yet built. Another thing which did not cause less surprise was the fact of our bringing our watches back with us; for in Spain there are always, on the high-road, persons extremely desirous of knowing what o'clock it is; and as there are neither clocks nor even sundials at hand, they are under the painful necessity of consulting travellers' watches. Talking of robbers, I may as well seize this opportunity of narrating an adventure in which we nearly sustained two of the principal parts. The diligence from Madrid to Seville, by which we should have gone, but from the fact of there being no more room, was stopped in the province of La Mancha by a band of insurgents, or of robbers, which is exactly the same thing. The robbers had divided the spoil, and were on the point of conducting their prisoners into the mountains, in order to obtain a ransom from their families, (would you not suppose that all this happened in Africa?) when another and more numerous band came up, thrashed the first, and _robbed_ them of their prisoners, whom they then definitively marched off into the mountains.