The façade, which is ornamented with florid arabesques in the purest style of the Renaissance, is a masterpiece of elegance and nobleness. The burning sun of Spain, which reddens the marble and dyes the stone with a tint of saffron, has clothed it in a robe of rich, strong colour, very different from the black leprosy with which past centuries have encrusted our old edifices. According to the expression of a great poet; Time, who is so intelligent, has passed his thumb over the angles of the marble and its too rigid outlines, and given the finishing touch, the last degree of polish, to this sculpture, already so soft and so supple. I particularly remember a staircase of the most fairy-like elegance, with marble columns, balustrades and steps, already half-crumbled away, conducting to a door which looks out upon an abyss, for this portion of the edifice has fallen down. This admirable staircase on which a king might be content to live, and which leads to nothing, possesses a certain indefinite air of singularity and grandeur. The Alcazar is erected upon an esplanade, surrounded by battlements in the Moorish style, from which you enjoy an immense view, a truly magical panorama. Here the cathedral pierces the sky with its extraordinarily lofty spire; further on, in the sunshine, sparkles the church of _San Juan de los Reyes_; the bridge of Alcantara, with its tower-like gateway, throws its bold arches across the Tagus; the _Artificio de Juanello_ obstructs the stream with its arcades of red brick, which might be taken for the ruins of some Roman edifice, while the massive towers of the _Castillo_ of Cervantes (a Cervantes who has nothing in common with the author of Don Quixote) perched upon the rugged, misshapen rocks that run along the sides of the river, add one denticulation more to the horizon already so profusely indented by the vertebrated mountain-crests. An admirable sunset completed the picture: the sky, by the most imperceptible gradations, passed from the brightest red to an orange colour, and then to a pale lemon tint in order to become of a strange blue, like a greenish turquoise, which last tint subsided in the west into the lilac-colour of night, whose shadow already cast a coolness over the place where I stood.