I know very
well that the Escorial had a serious and religious aim; but gravity is
not dryness, melancholy is not marasm, meditation is not ennui, and
beauty of forms can always be happily wedded to elevation of ideas."
This is the Frenchman's language as he goes into the Escorial; he does
not cheer up as he passes through the place, and when he comes out he
has to say: "I issued from that desert of granite, from that monkish
necropolis with an extraordinary feeling of release, of exultation; it
seemed to me I was born into life again, that I could be young once
more, and rejoice in the creation of the good God, of which I had lost
all hope in those funeral vaults. The bland and luminous air wrapt me
round like a soft robe of fine wool, and warmed my body frozen in that
cadaverous atmosphere; I was saved from that architectural nightmare,
which I thought never would end. I advise people who are so fatuous as
to pretend that they are ever bored to go and spend three or four days
in the Escorial; they will learn what real ennui is and they will enjoy
themselves all the rest of their lives in reflecting that they might be
in the Escorial and that they are not.
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