The funeral ceremony of the
dean was still in course, and after listening for a moment to the mighty
orchestral music of it--the deep bass of the priests swelling up with
the organ notes, and suddenly shot with the shrill, sharp trebles of the
choir-boys and pierced with the keen strains of the violins--we left the
cathedral to the solemn old ecclesiastics who sat confronting the bier,
and once more deferred our more detailed and intimate wonder. We went,
in this suspense of emotion, to the famous Convent of Las Huelgas, which
invites noble ladies to its cloistered repose a little beyond the town.
We entered to the convent church through a sort of slovenly court where
a little girl begged severely, almost censoriously, of us, and presently
a cold-faced young priest came and opened the church door. Then we found
the interior of that rank Spanish baroque which escapes somehow the
effeminate effusiveness of the Italian; it does not affect you as
decadent, but as something vigorously perfect in its sort, somberly
authentic, and ripe from a root and not a graft. In its sort, the high
altar, a gigantic triune, with massive twisted columns and swagger
statues of saints and heroes in painted wood, is a prodigy of inventive
piety, and compositely has a noble exaltation in its powerful lift to
the roof.
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