Inhabitants of the Alhambra.
I HAVE often observed that the more proudly a mansion has been
tenanted in the day of its prosperity, the humbler are its inhabitants
in the day of its decline, and that the palace of a king commonly ends
in being the nestling-place of the beggar.
The Alhambra is in a rapid state of similar transition. Whenever a
tower falls to decay, it is seized upon by some tatterdemalion family,
who become joint-tenants, with the bats and owls, of its gilded halls,
and hang their rags, those standards of poverty, out of its windows
and loopholes.
I have amused myself with remarking some of the motley characters
that have thus usurped the ancient abode of royalty, and who seem as
if placed here to give a farcical termination to the drama of human
pride. One of these even bears the mockery of a regal title. It is a
little old woman named Maria Antonia Sabonea, but who goes by the
appellation of la Reyna Coquina, or the Cockle-queen. She is small
enough to be a fairy, and a fairy she may be for aught I can find out,
for no one seems to know her origin. Her habitation is in a kind of
closet under the outer staircase of the palace, and she sits in the
cool stone corridor, plying her needle and singing from morning till
night, with a ready joke for every one that passes; for though one
of the poorest, she is one of the merriest little women breathing.
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