The
first day we were somewhat molested by the instruction of our patriotic
Granadan guide, wtho had a whopper-jaw and grayish blue eyes, but
coal-black hair for all his other blondness. He smoked incessant
cigarettes, and he showed us especially the pavilion of Charles the
Fifth, whom, after that use of all English-speaking Spanish guides, he
called Charley Fift. It appeared that the great emperor used this
pavilion for purposes of meditation; but he could not always have
meditated there, though the frame of a brazier standing in the center
intimated that it was tempered for reflection. The first day we found a
small bird in possession, flying from one bit of the carved wooden
ceiling to another, and then, taking our presence in dudgeon, out into
the sun. Another day there was a nursery-girl there with a baby that
cried; on another, still more distractingly, a fashionable young French
bride who went kodaking round while her husband talked with an
archaeological official, evidently Spanish. In his own time, Charley
probably had the place more to himself, though even then his thoughts
could not have been altogether cheerful, whether he recalled what he had
vainly done to keep out of Spain and yet to take the worst of Spain with
him into the Netherlands, where he tried to plant the Inquisition among
his Flemings; he was already much soured with a world that had cloyed
him, and was perhaps considering even then how he might make his escape
from it to the cloister.
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