ense of color, but as if seeking relief from
the gray of the church; and there are battle-pieces on the walls,
fights between Moors and Christians, which interested me. The dignified
consideration of the custodian who showed us through the apartments
seemed to have adapted to our station a manner left over from the
infrequent presence of royalty; as I have said, the young king of Spain
does not like coming to the Escorial.

I do not know why any one comes there, and I search my consciousness in
vain for a better reason than the feeling that I must come, or would be
sorrier if I did not than if I did. The worthy Howell does not commit
himself to any expression of rejoicing or regretting in having done the
Escorial. But the good Theophile Gautier, who visited the place more
than two hundred years after, owns frankly that he is "excessively
embarrassed in giving his opinion" of it. "So many people," he says,
"serious and well-conditioned, who, I prefer to think, have never seen
it, have spoken of it as a _chef d'oeuvre,_ and a supreme effort of
the human spirit, so that I should have the air, poor devil of a
_facilletoniste errant,_ of wishing to play the original and taking
pleasure in my contrary-mindedness; but still in my soul and conscience
I cannot help finding the Escorial the most tiresome and the most
stupid monument that could be imagined, for the mortification of his
fellow-beings, by a morose monk and a suspicious tyrant. 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