It seems that the pure and airy situation of this fortress has
rendered it, like the castle of Macbeth, a prolific breeding-place for
swallows and martlets, who sport about its towers in myriads, with the
holiday glee of urchins just let loose from school. To entrap these
birds in their giddy circlings, with hooks baited with flies, is one
of the favorite amusements of the ragged "sons of the Alhambra,"
who, with the good-for-nothing ingenuity of arrant idlers, have thus
invented the art of angling in the sky.
The Hall of Ambassadors.
IN ONE of my visits to the old Moorish chamber, where the good Tia
Antonia cooks her dinner and receives her company, I observed a
mysterious door in one corner, leading apparently into the ancient
part of the edifice. My curiosity being aroused, I opened it, and
found myself in a narrow, blind corridor, groping along which I came
to the head of a dark winding staircase, leading down an angle of
the Tower of Comares. Down this staircase I descended darkling,
guiding myself by the wall until I came to a small door at the bottom,
throwing which open, I was suddenly dazzled by emerging into the
brilliant antechamber of the Hall of Ambassadors; with the fountain of
the Court of the Alberca sparkling before me. The antechamber is
separated from the court by an elegant gallery, supported by slender
columns with spandrels of open work in the Morisco style.
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