The Alcazar, an old palace of the Moorish kings, is one of the best preserved buildings in Spain. From the outside, it looks like a fortress, as it is completely surrounded by high walls, battlemented towers and old houses, which structures form two spacious courts in front of the façade. Like the other parts of this building, the façade is plain and severe. The door is ornamented with arabesques that are painted and gilded, and there is also a Gothic inscription recording the time when the Alcazar was restored by the order of the king Don Pedro.

In fact, although the Alcazar is an Arabian palace, it is the work of Christian rather than Arabian monarchs. The date that it was begun is not known, but it was rebuilt towards the end of the Twelfth Century by King Abdelasio. King Ferdinand took possession of it about the middle of the Thirteenth Century; it was altered again by Don Pedro in the next century, since when it was inhabited by nearly all the kings of Castile. Finally it was chosen by Charles V. for the celebration of his marriage with the Infanta of Portugal.

The Alcazar has witnessed the loves and crimes of three races of kings, and every one of its stones awakens some memory or holds some secret. After entering, you cross two or three rooms, in which there is nothing Arabian left except the ceiling and some mosaics upon the walls, and find yourself in a court that strikes you dumb with wonder. A gallery composed of elegant arches supported by small marble columns arranged in pairs runs along the four sides. The arches, walls, windows and doors are covered with mosaics, carvings and arabesques. The latter are delicate and intricate, in some places perforated like a veil, in others thick and close as woven carpets and elsewhere again hanging and jutting out like garlands and bunches of flowers. With the exception of the brilliantly coloured decorations everything is as white, clean and glistening as ivory. Four large doors, one in each side, lead into the royal rooms. Here you no longer wonder; you are enchanted. Every thing that the most ardent fancy could imagine in the way of wealth and splendour is to be found in these rooms. From the ceiling to the floor, around the doors, around the windows in the distant recesses, wherever the eye may please to wander, such a multitude of gold ornaments and precious stones, such a close network of arabesques and inscriptions, such a marvellous blending of designs and colours appear that, before you have gone twenty steps, you are overpowered and confused, and you glance here and there as if trying to find a piece of bare wall upon which to rest your eye.

In one of the rooms, the custodian pointed out a reddish spot upon the marble pavement, and said very solemnly:

This is the stain caused by the blood of Don Fadrique, Grand Master of the Order of Santiago, who was killed here in the year 1358, by the order of the King Don Pedro, his brother.

When I heard this, I remember looking at the custodian as if to say: “Let us move on,” and the good man answered dryly:

“Caballero, if I were to tell you to believe this on my word you would be perfectly right to doubt it; but when you see the thing with your own eyes, it seems to me—I may be mistaken,—but——”

“Yes,” I hastily replied, “yes it is blood, I have no doubt of it; but don’t let us talk about it any more.”

Even if you are able to joke about a spot of blood, you cannot do so about the story of the crime. The place awoke in my mind all the most horrible facts. I seemed to hear Don Fadrique’s step echoing through these gilded rooms, as he was being pursued by the soldiers armed with clubs. The palace is shrouded in darkness; no noises are heard but those of the executioners and their victim. Don Fadrique tries to enter the court. Lopez de Padilla seizes him and he breaks away. Now he is in the court; he grasps his sword; he utters maledictions upon it for the cross of the hilt is entangled in the mantle of the Order of Santiago. Now the archers arrive; he cannot draw it from its sheath; he flies hither and thither as best he may. Fernandez de Roa overtakes him and fells him with a blow from his mace; the others approach and wound him and he expires in a pool of blood.

This sad memory soon vanishes amidst the thousand fancies of the delicious life of the Moorish kings. These lovely little windows at which the dreamy face of an Odalisk ought to appear at any moment; these secret doors before which you pause, despite yourself, as if you heard the rustling of a dress; these sleeping-rooms of princes enveloped in a mysterious gloom, where you fancy you hear the sighing of girls who lost in them their virginal purity; and the prodigious variety of colours and friezes resembling an ever-changing symphony excite your senses to such a degree that you are like one in a dream. The delicate and very light architecture, the little columns (which suggest the arms of a woman), the capricious arches, and the ceilings covered with ornaments that hang in the form of stalactites, icicles, and bunches of grapes,—all rouse in you the desire to seat yourself in the centre of one of these rooms, pressing to your heart a beautiful dark Andalusian head which will make you forget the world and lose all sense of time, and with one long kiss that drinks away your life, put you to sleep forever.

The most beautiful room on the ground floor is that of the ambassadors, formed by four great arches supporting a gallery of forty-four smaller arches, and above, a lovely cupola which is sculptured, painted and ornamented with an inimitable grace and a fabulous magnificence. On the next floor which contained the winter apartments, nothing remains but an oratory of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic, and a small room which is said to be the one where the King Don Pedro slept. You descend from here, by a narrow, mysterious staircase, into the rooms inhabited by the famous Maria di Padilla, a favourite of Don Pedro, whom popular tradition accuses of having instigated Don Pedro to the murder of his brother.

The gardens of the Alcazar are not large, nor extraordinarily beautiful; but the fancies that they engender are more precious than size or beauty. Beneath the shade of those oranges and cypresses, near the soft sound of those fountains when a great brilliant moon shone in the clear Andalusian sky and the host of courtiers and slaves lay down to rest, how many sighs of lovelorn sultanas were heard! how many humble words of proud kings! what mighty loves and embraces!

“Itimad! my love!” I murmured, thinking of the famous favourite of King Al-Motamid, as I roamed from path to path as if following her spirit: “Itimad! Do not leave me alone in this quiet paradise! Stop! Give me one hour of delight to-night. Don’t you remember? You came to me and your lovely locks fell over my shoulders like a mantle; and as the warrior seizes his sword, I seized your neck, softer and whiter than a swan’s! How beautiful you were! How my parched heart satisfied its thirst on thy blood-coloured lips. Your beautiful body issued from your splendidly embroidered robe like a gleaming blade from its scabbard; and then I pressed with both hands your large hips and slender waist in all the perfection of their beauty. How dear you are, Itimad! Your kiss is as sweet as wine, and your glance, like wine, makes me lose my reason!”

While I was uttering this declaration of love in the phrases and imagery of the Arabian poets, I entered a pathway bordered with flowers and suddenly felt a jet of water on my legs; I jumped back and had a dash of it in my face; I turned to the right, and felt a spray on my neck; turning to the left, I got another on the nape of my neck; then I began to run and there was water under me, over me, and all around me, in jets, sprays, and showers, so that in a moment I was as wet as if I had been plunged in a tub. Just at the moment I was about to shout I heard a loud laugh at the end of the garden, and, turning, I saw a young man leaning against the wall and looking at me, as if to say: “Did you enjoy it?” Then he showed me the spring he had touched in order to play the trick and comforted me by saying that the Seville sun would not leave me long in that wet condition, into which I had passed so brusquely, ah me! from the amorous arms of my sultana.