ntain side and seeming a
part of it, towered and stretched a building vaster than any I had seen
even in the limitless spaces of dreamland. Were it not for its cold
regularity, I should have thought myself approaching another desert of
giants who made toys of monoliths and obelisks; but these appalling domes
and towers could be the work of man alone. There was no toying here; all
was forbidding and gloomy; for this was the Escurial--immense, sinister, as
if fashioned from the grim product of those iron mines which gave its
name.

I could imagine the fanatical satisfaction Philip's dry mind had found in
planning this monument to represent the gridiron on which Saint Lawrence
was martyred. He who was to stand in history as the great Inquisitor, must
build his monastery and palace in honour of a martyr! But Philip was the
last man to have a sense of humour; and it was like him to appease an
injured saint by giving him a church a thousand times bigger than the one
destroyed on Saint Lawrence's own day, in the battle of San Quentin.

"Wouldn't the Escurial be hideous if it were anywhere else but just here?"
asked Pilar.

She was right; for on the Sierra it seemed an expression of the Sierra;
and in spite of Philip rather than because of him, it was splendid in the
melancholy strength which made it a brother of mountains.

We lunched on extremely Spanish food at a _fonda_ opposite the Escurial;
and when the time came for sightseeing--a time for us, but not for the
public--the Duke began by marshalling us all, except the weary Duchess and
the lazy Cherub, through the great door guarded by Saint Lawrence. Once
within, we saw the treasures, as a bird in flight sees the beauties of a
town over which he swoops; but we did see them, and once I had three words
and one look from Monica, before it occurred to Lady Vale-Avon to link an
arm in her daughter's, in a sudden overflow of maternal affection.

Carmona had made a point of the "influence" which could open for us doors
that, for others, would remain shut; and he did smuggle us into the
Library of Manuscripts, the Queen's Oratory, and the Capilla Mayor to see
the royal tombs. But after we had stopped longer than he wished in the
church, and the Choir, where Philip learned that Lepanto had saved Europe
from the Turks, and listened to the sad music of Mary Stuart's requiem,
the Duke promised something still better, in the palace. "What you shall
see there," he said, "is a secret