h industry. The
8500 pearls of the Virgin's cape might alone feed a province for no
short time. They are buried in the dark. Outside in the light, the
children of Spain are starving and without means of obtaining food. At
one's elbow the whine of the beggar is continually heard, till one
recalls Washington Irving's words: "The more proudly a mansion has been
tenanted in the days of its prosperity, the humbler are its inhabitants
in the days of her decline, and the palace of the king commonly ends in
being the resting-place of the beggar."

Here and there, in the interior as in the exterior, we find, mixed with
or decorating the Gothic, Moorish and Renaissance details and the later
extravagances which followed the decline of the Gothic. Even where the
carvers are expressing themselves in Gothic or Renaissance details, we
frequently observe an extreme richness, a love of chiaroscuro, of
sparkling jewel-like light and shade, and intricately woven
ornamentation which betrays the influence of the Arab. We see the
Morisco, a kind of fusion of French and Moorish, in many places. The
triforium of the choir is decidedly Moorish in its design, although it
is Gothic in all its details and has carvings of heads and of the
ordinary dog-tooth enrichment instead of merely conventionalized leaf
and figure ornament. It consists of a trefoil arcade. In the spandrels
between its arches are circles with heads and, above these, triangular
openings pierced through the wall. The moldings of all the openings
interpenetrate, and the whole arcade has the air of intricate ingenuity
so usual in Moorish work. Again, in the triforium of the inner aisle we
find Moorish influence,--the cusping of the arcade is not enclosed
within an arch but takes a distinct horseshoe outline, the lowest cusp
near the cap spreading inward at the base. We see Moorish tiles, we find
Moorish cupolas as in the Mozarabic chapel, and Moorish doorways, as the
exquisite one leading into the Sala Capitular,--here and there and
everywhere, we suddenly come upon details betraying the Arab intimacy.

The children of the Renaissance also embellished in their new manner,
not only in the magnificent carvings of the choir but in a variety of
places, for instance, the doors themselves contained within the Moorish
molds leading to the Sala just mentioned, the entire chapel of St. Juan,
the Capilla de Reyes Nuevos, portions of the Puerta del Berruguete, and
the bronze doors of the Gate