A few pipes for conveying water into the hot baths are the only vestiges of magnificence which time has spared: the glass and enamelled porcelain mosaics; the slender marble columns with their gilt capitals, ornamented with carving and verses from the Koran; the alabaster basins; the stones pierced in a thousand different places in order to allow the perfumes to filter through;--all, all had disappeared. All that is left is the carcass of the principal walls, and heaps of bricks rapidly crumbling to dust; for these marvellous edifices, which remind the spectator of the fairy palaces in the "Arabian Nights," are unfortunately only built of bricks or clay, crusted over with stucco or plaster. All the lacework, all the arabesques, are not, as is generally believed, carved in marble or stone, but merely moulded in plaster, by which method they can be reproduced without end and without any great cost. Had it not been for the extraordinarily conservative quality of the climate of Spain, all these edifices erected of such slight materials would never have remained standing at the present day. The legend of Galiana is more successfully preserved than her palace. She was the daughter of king Galafre, who loved her more than aught else in the world, and had built for her in the plain of the Vega a country-house, with delicious gardens, kiosks, baths, fountains, and cascades, which rose and fell exactly as the moon increased or waned, either by means of magic, or by one of those hydraulic artifices so familiar to the Arabs. Idolized by her father, Galiana lived in this charming retreat in the most agreeable manner, amusing herself with music, poetry, and dancing. Her hardest task was to escape the importunities of her admirers. The most troublesome and the most determined of them all was a certain petty king of Guadalajara, called Bradamant, a gigantic, valiant, and ferocious Moor. Galiana could not bear him, and, as the chronicler says, "What avails it that the cavalier be all fire, if the lady be all ice?" The Moor, however, was not to be rebuffed, and his delight at seeing and speaking to Galiana was so intense that he caused a subterranean passage to be dug from Guadalajara to Toledo, and through this passage he came to visit her every day.